


A Place So Dark

by Vagrant_Blvrd



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe- GTA V, Background Relationships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-04-24 03:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14347170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagrant_Blvrd/pseuds/Vagrant_Blvrd
Summary: Gavin died on a Thursday.That’s what the official records say, anyway.They also say he died in an accident.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely (very much so) based on the movie [The Wraith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wraith) and inspired by Michael and Gavin messing around in the [GTA V Jetpack Joyrides](https://youtu.be/BebwsKvucUE?t=25m35s) video.(Look, I don't know what happened either. Also, let's pretend Tron isn't a thing in this AU, because reasons.)

Gavin died on a Thursday.

That’s what the official records say, anyway.

They also say he died in an accident. 

Bad weather, bald tires, and too much speed going around a turn. ( _“You have our condolences, Mr. Jones, but we wouldn’t recommend an open casket funeral service, if you take our meaning.”_ )

Michael knows it’s all bullshit, the only truth in any of it being that Gavin’s fucking _dead_.

Oh, he knows Gavin had a bike, if you want to call it that. 

This atrocity of a Faggio painted like the Union Jack and covered in as many mirrors as he could afford because Gavin’s always been fucking strange.

Remembers Gavin, drunk as all hell and warm and happy and stupid with it as he leaned against Michael in their shitty apartment one night happily regaling him with the adventures of two stupid kids back in England getting into scrapes together. Reckless and young and too stupid to know how good they had it.

Gavin telling him he saw the damn thing in a dealer’s lot. Paint faded, mirrors shattered and leather of its seat cracked and split under the sun and how the last of his savings went into restoring it thanks to a bout of nostalgia. 

Something that reminded him of better times and it was all so stupid, wasn't it, Michael? Damn thing never went above fifty even though the manufacture insisted it did, and oh, he was a right idiot to buy it on a whim like that. 

The fucking look on Gavin’s face that night, flushed with alcohol and laughter and happy memories. 

Sweet smile on his face, and the urge to just lean in and kiss him the way he’d wanted to for so long by that point. Take Gavin's face in his hands and finally fucking show him how in love with him Michael was, but Michael’s always been a coward. 

Thought he had time to find a better way to do it. When they were both sober, no alcohol to cloud their judgment because he didn’t want Gavin doing something he’d regret, and now -

And now he’s got the cops telling him Gavin died on a Thursday in an accident when Michael was out of town. That their apartment building burning down a few days prior due to faulty wiring was just a stroke of bad luck, so very sorry, Mr. Jones.

Goddamn bullshit, all of it because this is Los Santos and those kind of coincidences don’t fucking happen here.

They just – they _don’t_.

Michael's been thinking since he got the call telling him about Gavin’s “accident” because this is is Los Santos and no one stays clean here for long. Even the ones who start out wanting to do the right thing, make the city a better place, get dragged down. Start making compromises, let the lines blur and lose sight of what they wanted to accomplish. 

And Gavin, right, Gavin was _smart_. 

So fucking smart with his computers and freelance camera work and everything else. 

He could have made a living anywhere, but somehow he ended up in this shithole of a city. Ran into Michael at a bar somewhere and shared their little stories and gotten their lives tangled so tightly together that it was hard to remember a time when Gavin hadn’t been in his life.

Could have left this city behind (left Michael behind) and gotten out, but he hadn’t, and it killed him.

Or _someone_ killed him, because Gavin was smart and clever as hell, and he’d been acting weird, off, the weeks before he died.

Shifty and nervous and doing a bad job of convincing Michael he wasn’t, and Michael had planned on talking to him about it. Cornering him if he had to because it worried him, scared, him, but he’d put it off. Thought he should give Gavin some space because God knows he was a stubborn bastard, would shut down if Michael pushed too hard.

Took a job that took him out of town for a few days, and then everything went to hell, and Michael.

Michael’s no saint, no innocent.

Never was.

Told Gavin he was an electrician, which hadn’t quite been a lie. He’d worked under the table for an electrician back in Jersey, did a little of that here too. Side jobs and shit, but he made most of his money playing muscle for small-time gangs.

Picking up jobs here and there and keeping his head down because he didn’t want to get involved in the shit that went down in the city. Made the news night after night with the bigger crews, territory disputes and power grabs.

He played it smart, just enough to get by. Pay for rent and essentials and maybe get the fuck out of Los Santos one day, take Gavin with him, and now look at him.

Stupid bastard with a hole in his chest where his heart used to be and an idea in his head that’s probably going to kill him when all’s said and done because that’s what this fucking city _does_. But that’s just fine with Michael as long as he gets to the bottom of this.

========

Michael gets a box in the mail a little over a month after Gavin dies. It looks like it’s been bounced around all over the place by the time it catches up to him, took a beating.

Since the place he had with Gavin is nothing but charred rubble, he’s been staying with someone he met on a job a while back. Guy from Boston who made his way to Los Santos and works as hired muscle when he’s not beating the shit out of some idiot in the fighting ring.

Good guy, really. Someone Michael can trust, as far as things go here, and that says a lot.

Jeremy’s working when the box gets delivered, which is probably for the best because it means he doesn’t get to see the look on Michael’s face when he opens it. 

There’s an envelope inside with Michael’s name on in it in Gavin’s handwriting and a fucking letter that Michael can’t bring himself to finish reading after he gets through the first paragraph.

Not when he can hear Gavin’s voice so clearly in his mind, that dumb little laugh of his. 

 

_Michael boi,_

_If you’re reading this, I guess it means I’m dead, doesn’t it? Probably did something stupid to get that way too. You always said it was a miracle I’d made it this long – how lucky I was – and it looks like you were right about that one._

 

Michael’s hands only shake a little when he sets the letter aside to go through the rest of the box’s contents.

A padded envelope, something more than just a letter inside with a note and a name and a request from Gavin.

Get it to a reporter with a major news outlet in Los Santos, guy who wasn’t scared to call out crooked politicians and business people in the city. Had had countless death threats and attempts on his life and one of the ones who wants to make a difference here.

Gavin’s note, his, _You’re the only one I can trust to get this to him before it’s too late, Michael._ and this sinking feeling because it already was too late.

The reporter’s dead. Killed in another “accident” not too long after Gavin’s, another perfect goddamn coincidence.

News outlets all over the city taking the time to comment on what a good man he’d been. How strong, how brave. Such a dedicated journalist and how there would never be another one like him again - 

And then never mentioned him again.

Went to great lengths not to, actually, like they’d paid enough lip service to make everything seem right to anyone watching. 

Michael hesitates before he opens the envelope because whatever is inside has to be what got Gavin killed.

Something he stumbled on or purposefully went looking for, because he could never leave something well enough alone if it caught his interest. Always chasing something and this time it got him killed. (It’s that last thought that has Michael ripping the envelope open and shaking its contents into his hand.) 

A USB drive and a couple of memory cards, and this horrible feeling taking root in Michael’s gut.

Gavin was always too smart for his own good. Nosy little fucker and Los Santos loves people like him.

Gets them caught up in shit they shouldn’t be, learn things they shouldn’t. Leaves them in a bad spot where they make the wrong decisions because there are no right ones to be made. 

If they’re lucky they get to live, if not...

Well.

Michael sets the USB drive and memory cards aside and goes through the packet at the bottom of the box.

All kinds of documents and shit with Michael’s face and a fake name. Michael knows right away that they’ll pass whatever scrutiny the authorities would put them through. 

There’s everything here he’d need to begin a new life somewhere along with enough money to keep him going until he got his feet under him. 

All those times he’d talk about the future with Gavin like he really thought there was one ahead for them. Getting the hell out of Los Santos and living somewhere better (safer), and the fucker had put this together.

Planned for Michael to get this – set up some kind of arrangement with a courier company to send it to Michael if the payments stopped – and just, what?

Thought Michael would hand off the USB drive and memory cards to some asshole and head off into the sunset? Act like Gavin’s death was unfortunate, but shit happens so might as well keep trucking on?

“You _fucker_ ,” Michael murmurs, staring at the fake driver license because it’s a shitty picture the way they tend to be, but he remembers Gavin taking it. 

The two of them joking around and being stupid the way they always were. Like they were kids again and Lost Santos wasn’t the kind of place it was. Joking around and being stupid and goddamn him anyway.

Michael doesn’t have it in him to cry anymore, not the way he did the first few weeks after Gavin died.

He’s too tired for that now, worn down and hollowed out by loss and grief and this obsession to get to the truth of things. Dead-ends and false leads and Jeremy giving him these worried looks thinking Michael had lost his fucking mind in his grief, and now _this._

He’s not crying but his eyes are stinging and his chest aches with this mix of grief and anger and a helplessness that Michael hates more than anything.

He’s been looking for anything to help him make sense of Gavin’s death for so long and it turns out he could have had his answers before now if the fucking postal service had gotten their shit together. 

“Fucking Christ, Gav. Only you.”

Jeremy’s got a crappy little laptop that he’s told Michael to use if he ever needs it. This cheesy smile on his face and shitty attempt at Spanish with his “ _mi laptop es su laptop_ ”.

Michael turns the laptop on and on and listens to the fans laboring to keep it from combusting, waits and waits and waits for it to finish booting up before he plugs the USB drive into the port.

A window pops up asking for a password and Michael stares at the screen for a long moment, because of course it’s not going to be so fucking simple.

He spends half an hour trying different passwords he thinks Gavin would have used with no luck, and removes the USB drive from the laptop. Then, because he’s a goddamn idiot, he tries the memory cards next and meets with the same failure.

For the life of him he can’t think of what Gavin’s password could be, and it’s frustrating on an entirely new level.

After a while, Michael turns Jeremy’s laptop off and winces at the noises it makes as it powers down. Sounds like it’s just a moment away from dying.

Michael puts the USB drive and the memory cards back in the box with the rest of the shit Gavin meant for him to have. He hides it all under a loose board in the storage closet Jeremy showed him. 

One of half a dozen hidey spots he has around his place. Smiling as he told Michael it was none of his business what Michael put in there, as long as the cops couldn't trace it back to them.

It’s not the best hiding spot, but he trusts Jeremy and he doesn’t have a lot of options left at the moment.

========

Michael did some asking around when he first started looking into Gavin’s death. People he knew from jobs he’d worked before, ones who might have heard something here or there. 

Bits of gossip, tidbits of information inadvertently leaked anything at all would have been useful but nothing helpful had turned up.

Oh, he’d gotten a few hints, clues, every so often but when he followed up on them they didn’t turn anything up.

This time he starts poking around forgers and their kind, sees if any of them remember Gavin. Are willing to admit to it after he’d ended up on the evening news the way he had. 

Such a tragic story about the perils of not keeping your vehicle properly maintained. That it was a good idea to obey traffic laws, but even then there had been people who’d seen enough accidents like his to recognize trouble when they saw it.

But now Michael’s got a starting point. Knows there are people out there in his world who knew Gavin.

It’s a matter of applying a little money to grease palms here and there, and this time around he must be asking the right questions.

He gets a little _“You didn’t hear it from me, but - “_ and some information on a guy new to Los Santos.

Someone with a crew looking to expand, running drugs and guns and just about everything else. Had some people involved in the underground fights on the side, and word was he’d been looking for someone good with computers a few months back. 

Found someone with a funny accent, _“Australian or British, one of those”_.

Michael knows it could be a coincidence because Gavin wasn’t the only British person in the city, but it’s his first real lead.

He asks Jeremy if he knows anything about the guy, run into his people in the ring.

“Stay the fuck away from Carmine, Michael. I mean it.”

Jeremy looks dead serious, eyes narrowed as he studies Michael. Smart bastard, Jeremy, and in the past that’s been in Michael’s favor, but now? 

Not so much.

He must see something on Michael’s face, or maybe he just knows him too well because his expression softens. Fucking _sympathy_ in his voice when he speaks next.

“Is this – Michael. Does this have anything to do with Gavin?”

Michael looks at Jeremy, too tired to lie.

Jeremy and Gavin never met, Michael trying his best to keep his worlds from colliding. So stupidly naive to think he could protect Gavin somehow by keeping the worst part of himself hidden from him.

“Michael - “

“Come on, Jeremy,” he says, hands gesturing. “Do you really think it was an accident? You’ve seen the reports!”

Jeremy’s read the reports too, fuck knows Michael wasn’t in the right frame of mind to hide them from him after he got his hands on them. Called in some favors and put himself in debt with people to do it, but he’d needed to know. Couldn’t fucking trust the cops or the fire department, not in this city, and things hadn’t added up.

Blacked out lines in the reports, other things that just added to his suspicion that something wasn’t right, that they were covering something up.

Jeremy breathes hard through his nose, looks like he wants lie, tell Michael he’s imagining things. That he’s taking this, Gavin's death too hard, letting it fuck with his head. Twist him all up until everything’s muddled up in his head. Turn it into some _trust no one_ bullshit conspiracy theory.

But then he sighs, rubs a hand over his face.

“Carmine’s not someone you want to fuck with,” he says, sounding just as tired as Michael feels. “Michael, if you go digging into his business, you’re going to end up like Gavin.”

It’s flat, bleak, Jeremy not aiming to hurt. Just warn Michael off of doing something stupid, putting himself in danger.

“I can’t let this go,” Michael says. 

He doesn’t have the words to explain it to Jeremy, why he needs to know what Gavin had found out to get him killed. Can’t let whoever did it get away with it, think they can do something like that and not expect it to catch up to them. 

He knows it won't bring Gavin back. 

Knows that it isn’t what Gavin would have wanted for Michael or he never would have gone to the trouble of constructing a new identity for him. (Wanted him to get out of the city and start over somewhere else, forget he’d ever set foot in Los Santos.)

But this isn’t about what Gavin would have wanted because he’s not fucking _here_. 

Michael is and he’s not going to let some piece of shit get away with thinking he’s untouchable.

“I know,” Jeremy sighs. “Christ, just. Be careful, asshole.”

It’s too late for that and Jeremy has to know it, but still. The sentiment’s nice. 

========

Michael still has favors saved up, people who put the word out that he’s looking for work. Needs money and is willing to do what it takes to get it. 

He’s got a good reputation to start with around the right circles. Known as someone who’d not afraid to get his hands dirty and pretty handy with explosives.

A rat-faced bastard approaches him, makes him a little deal.

Wants Michael to play guard for an old junkyard at the edge of the city. Decent enough pay, and all he has to do is make sure the only people who get in are part of Carmine’s crew. 

Anyone else? 

They get a bullet.

Nice and simple and nothing different from the work Michael’s done in the past.

Rat-face tells Michael that if he does a good job there’s room for advancement, and it feels like a normal job interview in a fucked up way. (Michael looking to make a career of this, and where does he see himself in five years?) 

When Michael gets back, he tells Jeremy he got a job. Works hard to ignore the look on his face. Smart bastard who knows Michael was never going to give up so easily, move on like nothing happened quickly. Bites back whatever he wants to say because because he knows Michael’s past listening. (He hears Jeremy’s _”Be careful, you asshole_ ” just fine though, grateful that he knows better than to stop him.)

And then Michael’s in a goddamn junkyard outside the city. Dirt road leading up to it and far enough out of the way that it feels cut off from civilization.

Tall trees and rocky terrain around it, all kind of animal noises in the night. Eerie, unsettling, the way the shadows fall, and Michael’s skin crawls with the feeling of being watched. 

He’s a city kid through and through and the place is creepy as fuck, even with other grunts like him there to guard it.

A handful of the kind of assholes he’s worked with before. Idiots who can’t seem to make a decent living and ended up here. Don’t mind the ugly parts of this life, and a few who probably like the way it’s a bit of a power trip.

All of them bottom of the food chain here, expendable hired muscle that people like Carmine burn through like it’s nothing, but they don’t see it like that. 

Think they’re a big deal with their guns and knives and whatever else stepping all over the little guy. Fuck the establishment and take what they want because that’s how things work here. 

Survival of the fittest and everything that entails.

Real dumb when it comes down to it because they’re too low in the hierarchy to know what Carmine’s up to out here.

Cargo containers at the heart of the yard and cars coming and going at all hours. A goddamned wall in place of a chain link fence. Buildings along the back converted into a bunk room, barracks, whatever the fuck you want to call it and a tiny kitchenette. 

Carmine coming in and turning it into a goddamned _compound_.

It makes Michael uneasy being out here on his own. New guy without anyone who’d give enough of a shit to watch his back if something happens out here. 

Worry in the back of his mind that somehow Carmine knows he’s connected to Gavin, but he shoves it back down for now. 

Besides, there’s fuck all he can do if Carmine knows and is just playing the long game Giving Michael enough rope to hang himself so he can get his hands on whatever is on that USB drive and the memory cards.

========

Michael’s not the best sniper, really.

He’s better suited to close quarters shit. Throwing fists and breaking teeth, making someone real fucking sorry they thought he looked like an easy target. 

But even an idiot can provide cover fire, keep assholes pinned down. Michael can hit a moving target fairly reliably and Rat-face seems to think that makes him best qualified to put him up in the tower.

Fuck, it’s barely that. Just a structure with a ladder attached near the wall, rickety as hell and covered with a tarp as half-assed shelter from the elements. Keeps the rain off and not much else, but it’s better than nothing.

Third night in and he hears an engine approaching. Something that brings him around to watch the back road because it’s a _bike_. 

It’s foggy out, visibility shit and too fucking quiet for Michael’s peace of mind.

Sounds echoing oddly when the others call out to each other. The sound of the bike seeming to come from all directions and it’s setting Michael’s nerves on edge because the damn thing sounds like something alive and so fucking angry.

There aren’t supposed to be incoming vehicles until the next day anyway, so Michael's on the comm to the Rat-face who’s the big guy in charge out here.

“I’ve got a bike coming up the back road,” he says, watching through his sniper rifle’s scope.

Rat-face gives a curt acknowledgment, and Michael listens with half an ear to him ordering the grunts to fall back to the main gates as he watches the road.

He tracks the bike, high-powered engine, going too fast for the twisting dirt roads out here. It looks like a streak of pale blue-white light moving through the fog, like the old stories his grandfather used to tell him about will-o'-the-wisps. 

A minute later the bike slides out of the fog and comes to a stop outside the walls.

Michael realizes it’s some kind of neon body kit that gives the bike a futuristic look, matched by the biker’s own suit. Black with pink lines of light running over it.

“The fuck?” Michael mutters, lifting his head from the scope to look down at the figure.

He’s never seen a bike or suit like that before.

The biker revs the bike’s engine, and Michael's eyes narrow as he looks through the scope again. Blinks when he looks up – right at Michael with the way his head’s angled – and a second later he kicks the bike into motion. 

Heads right for the gates with something held aloft in his hand with a blinking red light.

A fucking _bomb_.

“He’s got explosives!” Michael yells over the comms, and shifts his focus back to the damn biker.

Michael gets off a shot, two, but the guy jukes right, left, too fast for Michael to follow, get a solid bead on him. 

Michael swears, looking away to check on the grunts. A few of the smarter ones bolt for cover just in time as the gates blow open and the bike leaps through the smoke like something out of a movie. 

The biker avoids the idiots running around like chickens with their heads. Ducks low to hug the body of the bike to avoid gunfire as he head right for the center of the compound.

Rat-face is yelling at Michael to take the fucker out, and Michael tries, he does, but the biker’s _fast_.

Unnaturally so in the tight confines of the compound, still littered with wrecked cars and other accumulated shit that come together to create a maze. Somehow the fucker navigates it with ease while dodging gunfire and whatever else the grunts can throw at him.

There’s something about it sends a chill down Michael’s spine because with the amount of bullets flying down there someone should have hit him by now. Hit him, that bike of his, but not a single bullet does.

He just.

It has to be his eyes playing tricks on him with fog thick on the ground and shadows cast by the fires from the explosion because the biker veers sharp to one side. Seems to flicker when a group of grunts concentrate their gunfire on him in the moments before he finishes his turn and doubles back.

And then there are shrieks and yelps of pain when it becomes clear the grunts don’t seem to grasp the concept of crossfire and _holy fuck_.

The biker takes advantage of the confusion and darts for the cargo containers while everyone’s casting blame or bleeding.

Michael has enough time to yell a warning before explosions rock the compound, knock him out of the fucking tower where he hits the ground _hard_. 

He can’t breathe, the breath knocked from him, shoulder blinding pain where he landed on it, the rest of him not too pleased either – and then he hears the fucking bike.

It sounds like some kind of wild animal, snarling, growling as it prowls the compound.

Michael scrambles to get up, _get on his feet_. 

He lost the sniper rifle in the fall, but he has his handgun and goes to pull it when the biker fucking materializes out of the fog in front of him without warning.

Michael stares at him, the blank visor of his helmet and waits for a fucking bullet. Expects everything to end here in the mud and wet, but the guy just cocks his head, bike purring quietly.

There’s screaming, yells for people to put out the fire to save what’s left of the compound, but it all sounds far away. Whole worlds, because right now it’s Michael and the fucker on the goddamn bike - 

Michael’s earpiece crackles to life, Rat-face demanding to know his status. Barking out orders to take the biker out any means necessary, and Michael reaches up and pulls it out. 

Drops it into the mud and brings his foot down on it.

The biker’s still watching him, and Michael opens his mouth to say something – what, he doesn’t know – but his throat clicks, no sound coming out.

The biker seems to give himself a little shake, and drops low. Revs the bike’s engine, Michael moving out of the way as it leaps forward, tearing through the smoking remnants of the gates and vanishing into the fog.

Michael’s aware of people running past him, yelling and more gunfire and turns to see Rat-face watching him, eyes narrowed.

“The fuck happened back there, Jones?” 

Michael -

Fuck.

He doesn’t fucking _know_.

Had no idea there was someone else going after Carmine like this. Pulling a goddamn hit-and-run attack and either being so fucking good or just plain lucky to get in and out without getting killed outnumbered the way he’d been.

“Fuck if I know,” Michael says, puts some anger into his voice, snapping back. “I fucking warned you guys.”

He looks around at the other grunts. Some running to deal with the fire, others seeing to the injures. The rest are standing around like idiots, wide-eyed and stunned and not likely to last long in this world if this is their reaction when things turn to shit.

Rat-face snorts as he follows Michael’s gaze.

“Help with getting this clusterfuck cleaned up,” he says, and levels Michael with a look. “We’ll figure it out later.”

Michael nods and goes looking for his sniper rifle before joining the others, itch between his shoulders like he’s being watched.

========

Jeremy doesn’t ask what happened when Michael gets back to Los Santos after Rat-face declares the compound a loss and tells the grunts like Michael their services were no longer needed after that little shitshow.

“Michael.”

Michael’s hurting, back and side bruised up to hell and back, shoulder a throbbing mass of pain. He’s managed to catch a cold too, voice rough, scratchy thanks to being up in the fucking tower in the cold and rain. 

Overall he’s a fucking mess, and Jeremy’s being gentle about it. Doesn’t give him shit or tease him the way he normally would, and that burns a little because he’s not that pathetic just yet. (Not about that, anyway.)

But Jeremy’s a good guy. Worries about the idiot doing his best to get himself killed for a dead man and goddamn Michael’s life.

“Hey,” Michael says.

Jeremy sighs, dropping down on the couch next to Michael.

Stares at the television, stupid daytime dramas and shitty commercials and fidgets.

Plays with the ring on his finger, and Michael feels a pang at the sight of it because somehow he’s never asked Jeremy who has the matching ring. Never saw a reason to because it was Jeremy’s business, and Michael had reason to poke his nose into it.

Fuck, he doesn’t even know if they’re alive, but Michael hopes like hell they are because he’d hate for anything else for Jeremy.

Jeremy takes a deep breath, seeming to come to some sort of decision and glances at Michael from the corner of his eye. Braces himself, and says, voice light, like it’s just a casual offer:

“I know a hacker, if. You know. You ever need one. For, like. Anything.”

It’s halting and awkward and too much like Jeremy knows he’s pushing his luck here, the trust Michael has in him.

Jeremy turns his attention back to the television as he picks up the remote and flips through channels.

He’s trying for casual and nonchalant, but Jeremy looks like he’s expecting a fight - yelling at the very least.

Michael watches the television, hands clenched into fists on his lap. Sees glimpses of shows and commercials and entire other worlds someone dreamed up flashing by in quick bursts as Jeremy looks for something to watch.

He rubs his chest at the sharp ache, reminder, that he use to know a hacker of his own, too, apparently. An idiot who played at being a law-abiding citizen and very clearly wasn’t. (Or maybe he was, and Los Santos got its hooks into him, pulled him down the way it does everyone at some point, Michael will never know.)

Michael thinks about working up anger at Jeremy for prying, for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, but it doesn’t come. Not when he’s done so much for Michael without asking for anything in return. 

Given him a place to stay without asking questions. Let him make his own mistakes instead of trying to stop him after that first warning, and now he’s offering to help. 

To get involved in Michael’s problems by giving him the name of this hacker – and Michael knows it has to be Matt.

Idiot with a dry sense of humor, a slight drawl, and an old, old friend of Jeremy's.

Someone important to him, and Michael - 

It's tempting, because he still hasn’t cracked Gavin's password. Borrows Jeremy’s laptop and makes an attempt when Jeremy’s out of the apartment or asleep, and either he was more obvious than he thought or Jeremy found the box. 

Put the pieces together and realized Michael wasn’t making headway and resigned himself to Michael being the kind of stubborn who wouldn’t stop until he did. 

Decided that he’d rather help Michael at this point than let him do it alone, and Michael rubs at his eyes, dry and aching, and sighs.

He doesn’t want to drag Jeremy or his friends into this anymore than he already has. Knows he should have left when he started looking into Gavin’s death, but he hadn’t.

Too weak, or selfish, maybe a mix of both, and now Jeremy's offering to help. Putting himself and his friends into the line of fire for Michael, and it’s so goddamned tempting to just accept it, but - 

Jeremy’s got a ring on his finger, a simple little band of metal and somewhere out there (Michael hopes) someone has the matching ring. Jeremy’s got friends like Matt, loyal through and through and too stupid to know that’s the kind of thing that gets people killed in Los Santos.

“...I’ll think about it,” Michael says after a few minutes have gone by, and hopes Jeremy can’t hear the lie in it.

Jeremy lets out a breath, relieved, and looks at Michael. 

“Yeah?”

Michael smiles, lopsided and awkward, and nods.

“Yeah.”

========

Michael's on a grocery run when he hears the bike again.

Doesn’t think he could ever forget the way the engine growls like a wild animal, low and so fucking angry.

He stops mid-step and turns to see the fucker sitting on his bike in the mouth of an alley across the street.

It’s the middle of the day. Clear weather and warm enough out that Michael's in an old t-shirt, and the guy _still_ manages to find the darkest shadows around.

The lights on his suit seem to pulse faintly, and something about it brings to mind high school English class before he dropped out. Stupid teachers and dusty old books and stories and the one with the heart under the floorboards or something.

Michael's heart-rate kicks up notch, adrenaline and anger and an ugly mix of emotions hat clog his throat. Have him choking on his words as he moves closer, sore shoulder throbbing.

“The fuck do you want?” he yells, hands clenched so tightly by his side they’re aching. 

He sees the biker cock his head, studying Michael like he’s an interesting bug, but nothing more than that, and it’s infuriating. Has Michael starting across the street – jerking back just in time as a horn blares, loud and shocking, and Michael barely misses being hit by a box truck barreling down the road.

By the time he recovers, heart pounding at the near-miss and thinks to look back at the alley, its empty, biker long gone.

Michael stares, because it’s possible he missed hearing the guy leave when his attention was on the damn box truck, but he doubts it. With an engine that fucking distinctive he would have noticed him leave, would have heard it.

When he crosses the street this time, he remembers to check for traffic. Looks left, right, left again, and then it’s a quick jog to the alley’s entrance.

The shadows are lighter, not the inky darkness the biker had been surrounded by. It’s possible that was all due to the placement of the sun in the sky, shadows shifting in the time between Michael first spotting the guy until now, or maybe there’s some other logical explanation.

The biker was definitely there, not Michael’s mind playing tricks on him again. The ground’s dusty here, looks mostly undisturbed aside from one perfect little footprint where the biker had rested his foot.

“The fuck is going on?” 

Michael doesn’t know if he’s talking to himself or the rats digging through the garbage further down the alley.

He’s starting to think Jeremy had a point, all that time back. That Michael’s finally snapped, is seeing things that aren't actually there. Figments of his imagination and whatever the fuck else because so much about the biker doesn’t make sense.

A lot of things that don’t make sense, really, Michael’s mind tripping back to the shows his mom used to watch. Ghosts and creatures everyone seems to believe in that didn’t, _couldn’t_ exist because they weren’t fucking real.

You’re dead, you're dead, no coming back from that. Maybe it’s cold and harsh, but that’s how the world works. (Michael learned that one early on in life.)

You don’t just get a fucking do-over. Don’t get to haunt the living to make them repent their sins or confess to their wrongdoings or whatever the fuck.

All you get is fucking dead.

But as Michael stares down at the footprint, thinks to dig his phone out of his pocket and take a picture as proof, he wonders if there’s something to it after all.

========

There’s not a lot Michael can do in the following days, still recovering from his cold and just too fucking tired, drained, to think about picking up a job.

He uses some of the money Gavin gave him to buy a cheap little laptop at a pawn shop. Nothing fancy, but it’s enough for Michael to put some time into trying to decipher Gavin's password without worrying about hogging Jeremy’s laptop.

He gets a notepad at the dollar store and logs failed attempts to make sure he’s not going in circles. Ignores the worried looks Jeremy tosses his way and acts like he’s not in a holding pattern until he cracks the stupid password or something happens with Carmine.

And then one night Jeremy comes home and starts flipping through the channels again.

He’s finally found steady work, a crew that treats him as more than just cannon fodder from what he says. (He gets this look sometimes, like he wants to ask Michael to give the crew a try, give up on this obsession of his. Move past Gavin’s death and pick up his life again, but he never does, and Michael loves him for that.)

“Hey, Michael,” he says, toying with the stupid cowboy hat resting on his knee. “Have you heard about what’s been going on?”

Michael blinks, looking up from his phone. The dumb picture of the biker’s footprint he took over a week ago and had forgotten about. Half expected for it to be a picture of the ground and nothing else, product of Michael’s fevered mind and shit when he was sick, but no.

A very real footprint in the dirt. Clear enough that he can see the tread pattern.

“Uh...”

Jeremy snorts, and waves at the television. News anchor reporting on some gang activity. Grainy surveillance footage of someone taking out a warehouse down by the docks.

Michael’s blood freezes because it’s the fucking biker.

Blue-white lights of his bike and the stupid fucking pink of his suit and he’s riding away from the warehouse that’s engulfed in flames looking like some kind of vengeful spirit.

“The fuck is that?” Michael manages, voice raspy because he’s still getting over that damn cold.

Jeremy shrugs, settling back against the cushions like it’s no big deal. Some fucking vigilante running around Los Santos going after crews and gangs, and what a fucking maniac, right?

“No one knows. The guy just showed up a few weeks ago. Matt said he went after the Vipers the other night. Wiped out one of their meth labs.”

Michael can’t seem to look away from the television. Wants to ask (even though it’s going to make _him_ sound like the maniac here) if Jeremy can actually see the fucker. That it’s not just Michael's mind playing tricks on him.

“Yeah? He know anything else about the guy?”

Jeremy shrugs, eyes sliding towards him.

“Not much, really. He just seems to have a serious serious hate-on for anyone dealing hardcore drugs.”

There have been people before in this city, usually some form of cop or law enforcement, but sometimes it was just a normal civilian. Someone who just lost it over how corrupt shit was in Los Santos. Went rogue, or whatever they wanted to call it and started hunting down criminals. 

Targeted gangs and crews and the lucky ones did some damage before someone put them down. Left a mark on the city – this bright spot of resistance against the corruption in the city that never lasted. 

Most just died bloody. 

Cut down in the street, and left for the authorities to sort out.

This guy - 

Michael listens to the news anchor as they talk about previous attacks the biker’s been responsible for, possible theories for his motive, and looks at Jeremy.

“Your crew worried he might hit you guys?”

Jeremy shrugs, this odd little grin on his face.

“Not really,” he says. “They don’t mess with that stuff.”

That's no guarantee the biker won’t step things up a notch. Start going after everyone indiscriminately, but Jeremy seems pretty confident his new crew will be fine.

That either means they’re smart enough to avoid dealing with the kind of thing that the biker’s focused on, or they think they can handle him if he does go after them.

“Hey,” Jeremy says, and bumps his shoulder against Michael’s. “We’re good, I promise.”

“Yeah, I’ll hold you to that,” Michael says, and hopes Jeremy’s telling the truth.

========

Michael doesn’t go looking for the biker on purpose, really, he’s just -

Fuck.

Fuck, no. 

He _does_.

To be fair, though, he doesn’t just start wandering the streets of Los Santos at night hoping to run into the bastard.

He drives out to Carmine’s compound first, because that’s definitely better.

It’s been raining on and off for several days. Overcast with heavy rain clouds hanging over Los Santos and the surrounding area, pressing down like a physical thing.

Michael has no damn idea what he’s even looking for, but he ends up spending most of the day there. Digging through the charred remains of the main buildings and picking through debris and rubble where the cargo containers sat.

Finds weapons parts that survived the fires mostly intact. Enough that Michael can get a good idea of what was being stored out here. The reason Carmine’s been laying low recently, keeping his head down.

Michael’s no detective, not even all that smart when it comes down to it, but he knows what he’s looking at out here. Takes a few pictures of his phone because why the fuck not have that kind of incriminating evidence on him?

When he gets to the tower he pauses. Studies the churned up tracks near its base, anything useful from that night long obliterated by the grunts rushing to put out the fires, get the injured out. Idiots who had no fucking idea what they were doing and got in everyone’s way. 

Out of curiosity, some random whim, Michael walks around the outer perimeter and finds the spot where the biker paused before launching his attack.

There’s not much to see there, just what might have been tracks from his bike. Maybe someone else stopping to gawk at the site, who the fuck knows.

“Goddamn waste of time,” Michael mutters, kicking mud off his feet before he heads back to the city.

Stops to readjust his rearview mirror because his car’s a piece of shit and the thing slides out of position after a while. And then he damn near has a heart attack when he looks into the rearview mirror to make sure it’s positioned properly and sees the biker behind him on the road.

“Motherfucker!”

Michael whips around, heart racing because he’s alone out here and, who the fuck knows what sets the guy off - 

But the roadway’s clear.

Nothing.

No _one_ around for miles.

“Are you kidding me?” Michael mutters as he gets out of his car, a slight tremor in his hands as he goes for his gun.

When he gets to where he saw the biker parked behind him he finds one perfect footprint in the mud. 

Clear enough he can see the tread before the sky opens up and rain starts falling.

Steady downpour that start to fill the footprint with water, mud collapsing in on itself and erasing whatever evidence the biker was even there.

“Fucking perfect,” Michael grumbles, tipping his head back to stare up at the sky.

Unrelenting gray as far as he can see, rain cold and unfeeling and stealing his warmth away with each passing moment.

========

After that little adventure Michael still isn’t wandering the streets of Los Santos like some character in a shitty Vinewood movie, but, you know.

It’s really fucking close.

He starts with that alley he saw the biker in, and just sort of works his way around the city going to areas he’s been spotted.

Has the feeling at least half of them are false leads. People calling in to the hotline the LSPD set up just for shits and giggles. Some just too fucking drunk or high to know that they'd seen wasn't the biker at all. 

Still he goes out looking, and it gets him trouble.

Has him step too far into some shitty little gang’s territory when they're feeling weak, vulnerable, after the bicker’s attack. The continued presence of the cops and whoever else investigating the biker forcing them to cut back on criminal activities and costing them time and money and profit.

Sends him running for his damn life with a pack of angry gang members after his blood because he’s an idiot.

“Fucking hell,” he pants, lungs burning and legs aching and this was not how he saw himself going out, if he’s being entirely honest with himself

Getting shot up by assholes he doesn’t have a problem with because his sense of direction is shit and the fucking AI assistant on his phone didn’t come with gang territory maps installed, go figure. (A glaring mistake in Los Santos, really.)

He could call Jeremy to come bail him out, but honestly doubts he’d make it across half the city before Michael bites it.

There’s a flash of movement at the corner if his eye, the sound of a very distinct engine, and Michael wheels around to meet it, gun raised. 

The biker’s tearing out of aside alley towards him, gesturing for him to get on behind him. Head turned to look behind them where they can hear Michael’s pursuers gaining on him.

Michael balks, and the guy looks fucking _annoyed_ about it when he looks back at Michael. Impatient as he snaps his fingers, gestures becoming more emphatic the closer the yelling gets, and still Michael hesitates.

At least until one of the assholes chasing him fires off a shot way too fucking close.

After that Michael’s all about jumping on the back of the fucking bogeyman’s bike because really, what could possibly go wrong?

The biker’s reassuringly solid when Michael wraps his arms around him. Grunts in surprise when Michael squeezes just to be sure, and taps his arms to get Michael to ease up a little.

Michael loosens his hold, and the biker handles the bike with long ease as he revs the engine and they take off down the street.

Goes way too fucking fast, wind making Michael’s eyes water. 

And fucking sue him when Michael presses his forehead against the biker’s back as they speed away. He’s tired, adrenaline rush fading and he doesn’t have a fucking helmet to protect against the wind or massive head trauma if they crash.

The guy twitches, but relaxes after a moment.

Michael assumed the biker would drop him off somewhere in the city. Maybe a few blocks away out of the gang’s territory or somewhere else nearby, but he strikes off east instead. Heading out of headed out of Los Santos and up to Galileo Observatory.

The sun's starting to rise by the time they reach it. Inky black fading to lighter blue that bleeds over to oranges and pinks near the horizon as they slow to a stop in front of the observatory building.

Michael climbs off the back of the bike, legs stiff and takes a moment to adjust before he follows the biker to the walkway overlooking the city. Looks over to see him leaning against the railing, tired slump to his shoulders.

“Hey,” Michael says, words awkward, uncertain. “Uh. Thanks, for saving my ass back there.”

The guy looks at him, blank face of his helmet disconcerting, alien. And then he cocks his head a certain way. 

Oddly familiar, and Michael bristles.

“None of your goddamned business,” he mutters, not about to tell the fucker why he was out there in the first place.

Trying to find this mysterious vigilante everyone’s been talking about for weeks like fucking - 

What?

Some idiot in a stupid movie chasing after the mysterious superhero or some stupid bullshit?

Half afraid he was a figment of Michael's imagination even though there was proof the guy was because he’d seen the biker do things that shouldn’t be possible time and time again. (Shit that didn’t make sense, shouldn’t make sense.)

And now the guy’s - 

He’s not making any noise, but he’s sure as hell laughing at Michael. Like he knows exactly what Michael was doing back there. Knows why Michael’s being gruff and surly now and thinks it’s so damn hilarious.

Shoulders shaking with it, and Michael huffs in feigned annoyance and goes back to watching the sunrise. Tired and sore and somehow still alive after that act of unbelievable stupidity on his part.

“You have a name?” Michael asks, tearing his eyes away from the view before him, not all that surprised to see the biker’s not there anymore.

Just.

Fucking _gone_.

When he looks, that damn bike of his is gone too.

Not a goddamned trace of either, and Michael sighs as he reaches for his phone.

If he’s lucky Jeremy will answer his phone this early. Won’t ask what the fuck Michael’s doing all the way out here at this hour, or where his car is.

========

Rat-face calls Michael a few days later. 

Snide, condescending, but he’s still Michael’s best bet at getting closer to Carmine. 

He doesn’t tell Jeremy about this either, doesn’t want him to worry. Just says he’s got a call from a friend, an easy little job. 

A day or two at most and if he’s lucky a steady gig like Jeremy has. (Pretends he doesn’t see the dubious look Jeremy gives him because he might have gone a little overboard trying to sell that load of bullshit, but Jeremy’s good. Doesn’t ask.)

Rat-face gives him an address for a place down by the docks. Another warehouse, and Michael frowns when he realizes where it is. Real fucking close to that place the biker hit some time back. The one that ended up on the news and Jeremy insisting Michael see for himself what had Los Santos all abuzz this time.

Coincidence, or just the way things happened around here. Birds of a feather and authorities who’d turn a blind eye if you paid them enough, most likely.

He shows up close to sundown, sees some familiar faces keeping guard. Some of the grunts from the compound.

Rat-face gives him the basics, patrol the perimeter and no one in or out who isn’t one of Carmine’s. No special renovations to the place, just your average shitty warehouse slowly rusting away thanks to the salt air.

Michael gets the late shift and ends up partnered with a sour-faced dick who sneers when he lays eyes on Michael, eyes lingering on his freckles. Asks if his parents knows he’s out this late, and Michael smiles. Flat and humorless and doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction past that.

Catches Rat-face watching them closely. Wonders if there’s something behind him bringing Michael back or if they’re just getting desperate with the biker scaring hired guns off.

As far as Michael knows he hasn’t racked up a body count yet in his attacks – no interest in going after the grunts. Seems to focus more on hitting fuckers like Carmine where it hurts. Property damage and goods, product. Flashy enough about it that anyone in the way has time to get the fuck out before shit goes down.

But Michael supposes just the thought of what someone like him might do, the way most people operate in this city would be enough to make people nervous. Concerned that he’s working up to something bigger, might not care about any causalities along the way would be enough reason to be picky when it comes to jobs. Steer clear of ones like this one.

Michael slings his rifle over his shoulder and heads off to patrol, wondering if Sour-face is going to shoot him in the back before the night’s through with the way his luck’s been going.

========

The biker shows up just after four.

Michael rounds the corner and the fucker snaps his headlight on, goddamn blinding, and then he’s making a run at the warehouse.

Bike howling as he pushes it as fast as it will go and Michael watches dumbly as it streaks past, leaving a after trail of light in its wake.

Sour-face sees the biker coming and puts out the alarm, firing wildly and missing every fucking shot because apparently he never learned to aim. 

Michael runs for the back of the warehouse where the loading bays are. There aren’t any trucks pulled up to them at the moment, but Rat-face left one open because it’s Los Santos in summer and hot as fuck. No reason for air conditioning inside and the only way to cool things down is the weak breeze blowing through.

No trucks and no ramps, but there’s a stack of old wooden crates and other shit piled up off to the side. Go fast enough, hit it at the right angle and you might - _might_ \- get enough height you could jump it.

He gets there just in time to see the fucker do it too, barely clearing the jump and landing badly, bike fishtailing before he regains control.

Alarmed yelling and more gunfire and Michael hangs back, not wanting to run into that after the clusterfuck at the compound. 

He sees Sour-face run up, hands gripping his rifle tightly and this look of shock on his face as something inside the warehouse explodes. Fire spreading quickly sending Rat-face and the thugs spilling out though the open loading bay and side doors.

Scream of that engine and the biker soars back out through the loading bay. He manages to stick the landing this time and makes his getaway.

All in all, less than five minutes have passed since he made his presence known, and everything is chaos.

Fiery chaos with a side of yelling – Rat-face and some of the stupider grunts – and more burning.

Fucking impressive, actually.

“Holy shit,” Sour-face says, watching the warehouse burn.

Michael snorts, shouldering his rifle as he heads towards the warehouse where Rat-face is trying to regain control of the situation, voice starting to go hoarse.

========

Michael gets bounced all over the city along with Sour-face McGee and the rest of the hired muscle. (The ones who don’t suddenly have somewhere else to be when the biker keeps showing up to fuck up Carmine’s operations.)

He patrols warehouses and other spots of interest with Rat-face overseeing it all. Gets picked to help escort some twitchy motherfuckers handcuffed to metal briefcases and then back to the warehouse and so on and so on.

The biker takes out several of the warehouses, cases the office building and Michael swears he catches a glimpse of the guy tailing the unmarked vans used to transport those twitchy motherfuckers across the city.

Carmine’s not his only target – the biker goes after the Vipers again and other gangs that deal in hardcore drugs and other nasty shit. Makes a lot of enemies along the way and ends up on the again.

Sour-face continues to be a condescending, ignorant bastard and Rat-face keeps watching Michael, which.

Probably not good, but Michael figures there’s some overlap with him coming on board and the biker targeting Carmine, so.

Understandable.

A little bit alarming, in that Michael’s on his own here and is so very fucked if Rat-face has twigged to the fact Michael has ulterior motives, but still understandable.

The thing is, Rat-face doesn’t seem as angry when the biker stages an attack on Carmine’s operations, and it slowly dawns on Michael that the fucker’s compiling information on him.

Every time the guy shows up is an opportunity to study him, learn how he operates. 

It makes Michael worried, because for whatever reason he and the biker seem to have compatible goals. (There’s also the fact the guy hasn’t killed Michael even though he’s had every chance to. That he fucking saved his life.)

“Jones!”

Michael turns as Rat-face come over to where he and Sour-face are waiting for orders.

It’s another warehouse. Industrial district this time, and Michael’s noticed there are a lot of Carmine’s regulars around. 

“You’re with them,” Rat-face says, and points at a cluster of the regulars, smoking by the curb before turning to Sour-face. “You’re with me.”

Sour-face shoots Michael a smug little look, like he thinks it’s an honor that Rat-face picked him over Michael, like Rat-face hasn’t been watching him too. Suspicious as fuck about the grunts, especially the ones who came on board around the time the biker showed up.

Michael walks over to the group Rat-face pointed him at.

Rough guys. The kind who go out and do Carmine’s dirty work, bust a few kneecaps here, take care of annoyances there and don’t lose sleep over it.

They give Michael a once-over and promptly ignore him. Go back to their little gossip session until Rat-face snaps out orders and they head off to patrol.

Michael feels underdressed compared to them, standard light body armor for him while they’re decked out in the heavy duty military grade shit. Look like they’re expecting a hell of a fight.

Could be added precaution thanks to the biker’s guerrilla tactics, could be something else.

This whole situation feels off to Michael, makes him uneasy because he has a feeling Carmine and Rat-face have been baiting the biker. Setting up places, fucking targets for him all over the city so they can draw him out, figure out how he operates and this?

So many of Carmine’s regulars, people he’s kept with him because they’ve proved some form of stronger loyalty to him than just some quick cash is concerning. The way they’re decked out in heavy armor and weaponry - 

The fucking snipers he’s seen setting up around the area?

Yeah.

Fucking trap.

Clear lines of sight on all sides and snipers positioned up high. Nice little straightaway leading up to the front of the warehouse. Shit-ton of Carmine’s regulars and hard hitters waiting inside in case the biker gets past the outer line of defense.

Fucking Christ, he hopes the goddamn biker is smart enough to recognize this for what it is, do the smart thing and stay away.

========

The stupid motherfucker shows up.

========

One second Michael’s patrolling, the next everything’s on fire.

Okay, no.

There’s some shit in between, but mostly the part where everything’s on fire.

One of the snipers calls out a warning, lets them know the biker’s been spotted and Rat-face immediately puts everyone on alert.

The group Michael’s with double-times it to the front of the warehouse just in time to see the biker dodging sniper fire as he races toward them.

He can hear Rat-face on the comms, barked orders and vicious threats, and the biker’s still coming, bike howling like a wild thing.

Michael’s group leader orders them to take up positions behind cement barricades for cover as they try to mow the fucker down, and he still keeps coming.

Seems to flicker like a hologram in an old shitty sci-fi flick or trick of the light as they rain bullets down on him and he keeps coming even though it’s clear this who thing was a trap from the beginning. 

He just doesn’t fucking _stop_.

Michael can see lights reflecting off the biker’s helmet. Sees when one of the fucking sniper bullets clips his tire and he loses control, fishtailing wildly before spinning out.

Sees in perfect clarity the goddamn bomb he was carrying arc through the air towards the fuel tanks to one side of the warehouse.

Panicked yells and everyone fucking running before it goes off, and _then_ everything’s either on fire or exploding like the end of an overproduced summer blockbuster.

========

It’s pure chaos.

Rat-face trying to regain control of the situation even though the grunts have run off and even the regulars are spooked. Unsettled by the biker and his little suicide run. They’re hanging back, hair-trigger reflexes and no concern of theirs who ends up in their sights.

Michael fades away, moves with the small crowd of stunned regulars until he’s at the spot where the biker crashed. 

The thing’s fucking totaled, twisted metal and broken glass and ruined where it slammed into a brick wall.

He’s expecting to find the biker in much the same condition, but there’s no body to be found.

Shattered glass, tinted black, that must be from his helmet. Shredded gloves that have been tossed aside, splatters of blood weaving away fro the crash site and deeper into the maze of streets around the warehouse.

Michael follows it, sick feeling in his gut as the splatters get larger, path more erratic and pulls up short at the bloody hand prints. Places where the biker rested for a brief moment before pushing on.

“Fucking Christ,” he mutters.

He moves faster, sense of increased urgency to his search, and almost runs straight into goddamned Sour-face.

See that piece of shit stalking down a dark alley where the blood trail leads, voice cold and mocking.

“Come on on, asshole, I know you’re here!”

There’s movement deeper in the alley and Sour-face spins to face it, croons, “There you are.”

Christ.

Michael has a choice to make here, one that has his feet rooted to the ground.

He can keep going the way he has been. Hope that Rat-face will move him up in the ranks, close to Carmine where he can kill the fucker himself, or -

Sour-face aims a kick at the biker, manages to land a blow that wrenches a pained grunt from the crumpled figure at his feet.

Or Michael can do the right thing here and save the only guy who seems to have it out for Carmine as much as he does.

Another kick, sound of a bone snapping. Sour-face's grating laughter and Michael moves he realizes he’s made his decision.

Sour-face isn’t isn’t paying attention to anything other than the biker, so it’s easy to sneak up behind him. 

For a fleeting moment, Michael considers putting a bullet in the asshole's head, putting him down like a rabid dog. 

It’d be the smart thing here, leave one less fucker gunning for him later, but Michael’s not that far gone yet. Doesn’t like the thought of killing the asshole like this just because it’d be easy.

Michael takes one long step forward and slams the but of his assault rifle into the back of Sour-face’s head. Pulls the blow because he doesn’t want to kill him, just take him out of the equation for a bit.

Sour-face drops like a stone.

Michael kicks his gun away and looks up at a soft sound, and sees the biker watching him warily.

His stupid suit’s glowing weakly, sections blacked out completely. Far too many holes, tears in the suit, and holy fuck, so much blood.

A part of Michael is surprised that the fucker bleeds, even thought he followed the evidence of it here in the first place. 

And then the biker shifts, tries to move but it must jar something because he lets out this pained noise, pants harshly before he tries again, because of course he does.

Michael shoots a glance behind him at a faint shout. Rat-face must have Carmine’s regulars back under control, have them out searching for the biker after checking the crash site.

Michael swears, low, angry, as he shoulder his rifle and moves closer to the biker who’s still watching him warily.

“How bad is it?” Michael asks, and after a brief hesitation the biker moves his hands from where they’re pressed against his side.

When Michael reaches out to see how badly injured he is, the biker grabs his arm and shakes his head. Gestures to Michael to help him up. The same impatient gesture from that night weeks ago when he saved Michael’s ass from that gang, and Michael sighs as he gets him to his feet.

The biker wobbles alarmingly and doesn’t protest when Michael gets an arm around his shoulders and helps him out of the alley.

It’s slow, halting, the biker’s breathing a harsh pant in Michael's ear, but he doesn’t falter. Just keeps going with the same grim determination he had when he went on that stupid fucking suicide run earlier.

“Fucking idiot, you're lucky you didn’t get yourself killed back there” Michael mutters.

The biker stumbles, seems to trip over his own feet at that, and Michael grunts at the sudden movement. Places a hand on the bikers chest and grimaces as it comes away wet. (Feels fingers gripping is arm tightly before the biker releases his hold and they keep moving.)

They spend several tense minutes avoiding Rat-face’s patrols until they reach a side street. Empty save for a few cars packed along it, and Michael breathes out a sigh of relief.

Michael spots a battered sedan and props the biker up against it while he uses the butt of his assault rifle. Barely managed to catch the biker as he starts to slide down, too weak to stay on his feet for even that small amount of time.

“Fucking hell,” Michael mutters, manhandling him into the passenger’s seat. 

He has to lean across the biker to get the seat belt on him. There’s no telling if they’re going to need to make a quick getaway, and he doesn’t know if the guy would survive another crash without it the way his night’s going.

The biker shies back from him, and Michael freezes. Worried he’s inadvertently crossed some kind of boundary, but then he glimpses skin in the moment before the biker turns his face away.

 _Oh_.

The broken visor, right.

Stands to reason the biker would be touchy about keeping his identity secret with the effort Carmine and his allies have been putting into hunting him down.

“Sorry,” Michael says, hands clumsy as he checks to make sure the seat belt's secure before ducking back out of the car.

He breathes out a shaky breath, eyes scanning the street for anything gout of place.

Still quiet, no signs they’ve been followed and that brings up another problem.

Michael can’t bring the biker back to Jeremy's apartment. Doesn’t know if the biker even has somewhere to lay low in Los Santos, and Michael doesn’t trust any of his usual haunts.

There is, however, a place he knows where no one will ask questions.

He’s never been there himself, but that might be better, actually. No reason for anyone to look for him – them – there.

Hopefully, anyway.

========

There’s a surprised huff – laughter? - from beside Michael when they reach their destination.

And, look.

“Fuck you,” Michael says, because it was the best place he could think of on such short notice, and also? “Fuck off.”

The biker shakes his head, but doesn’t offer up protest as Michael slides out of the car and walks to the front office of the motel.

Pay by the hour kind of place, neon sign out front with burned out letters and really fucking sad overall.

The sleazeball behind the bullet-proof glass inside doesn’t even look up at Michael at first. But the moment he sees how much money Michael slides over he lets out a low whistle, eyes flicking up to him.

“Have a nice night,” he says, voice dripping innuendo and Michael's skin crawls.

“Thanks,” he grits out, and heads back to the car parked around the side just out of sight.

Sleazebags like the guy at the front desk don’t normally bother Michael like this, get under his skin. But for some reason – this asshole has. Maybe it was the sly look on his face, the knowing look, _something_ rubbed him the wrong way.

The biker picks up on it, too.

He’s been careful to keep his face hidden, but Michael catches that flash of bare skin when he turns his head to look towards the motel office, head cocked.

“Fucking scumbag working the desk,” Michael explains, even though he knew what he was getting into coming here.

They lucked out, got a corner room towards the back. Not visible from the street and the lights in the parking light are shit, half of them off or just broken. Makes getting inside without being seen easier.

The room itself is small, not much inside other than the bed and a television on stand. Little end table with a phone. No luxuries, but considering what most people use places like this for, they’re not necessary.

“Come on,” Michael says, headed towards the cramped little bathroom. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

They made a little pit at a 24/7 for some medical supplies before coming here. Convenience stores aren’t usually known for their great selection, but this is Los Santos and they know their clientele. Don't give you odd looks when you come in looking a little harried, just keep their eyes down and count out your change.

The biker shakes his head, pulls back on Michael until he stops. Shakes his head again, and steps back until Michael lets him go. Watches him pat the tear along his ribcage, pulling the ragged edges aside to show whole skin, not the mess Michael had seen back in the alley.

Dried blood, newly healed wounds that look tender, sore. Even those marks fading as Michael watches.

“The fuck.”

Less than an hour ago Michael watched the fucker lose control of his bike and hit a wall after riding hellbent through a hail of bullets.

He knows he got hit, saw the proof of it himself. Thought it was a miracle he’d survived all of that to begin with, but this?

The biker takes another step back, shoulders hunched and looks like he’s ready to bolt. Fucking _run_ , like accelerated healing is going to be the final straw in this shitshow of weirdness, and Michael - 

“That explains a lot, I guess,” Michael says, frowning at the guy as he thinks about his previous attacks. 

No way in hell he could have gotten away unscathed with the arsenal leveled against him. But he’d just kept coming, pulled that little flicker-trick of his and seemed untouchable.

“You got hit before, didn’t you?”

All those hit and run attacks of his with Carmine and Rat-face getting more and more determined to take care of him as time went by. The manpower they put into it.

The biker shrugs, holds a hand out and makes a so-so gesture, which Michael assume means yes, but only a little, which.

Fucked up, but that seems to be this guy in a nutshell.

Michael knows what the expected thing here should be. That he should be freaking the fuck out with actual out of the ordinary shit going on right in front of him. 

To be fair, though, nothing’s made sense for a while now.

The mystery biker shows up with a glowy bike and who is somehow to appear and disappear into thin fucking air and has a habit of fucking shit up? The same stupid motherfucker who can survive a cash that should have left him a smear on the pavement _and_ being riddled by bullets? 

Fucking weird, but this is Los Santos.

The whole damn city draws weird shit to it, all the misfits and freaks and everything else that ends up here. 

Something like this guy isn’t all that strange in comparison. 

Sure, Michael’s never been one for believing in things like ghosts and shit, but he’s seen enough to know there’s weird shit out there. 

“There a reason you’ve been going after Carmine?” Michael asks, smiles a little at the way the biker just stares at him waiting for the freak out that doesn’t come.

And then the biker looks - 

Tired.

He looks tired as he shakes his head and starts to pace. Comes real close to Michael for a moment. Turns his head to hide what little of his face the broken visor reveals. 

He holds his hand out, taps his chest once, twice.

“What?”

The biker repeats shakes his head again, frustrated that Michael’s so goddamn shit at charades and brings his hand up to draw a line across his throat.

“He killed you?” Michael asks, feeling like he’s falling even deeper down the rabbit hole and the biker thinks about it for a moment before he nods.

Close enough to count as an affirmative, Michel guesses, and that - 

That – okay.

That would be a good motivator for revenge, killing the fucker who killed you. But the biker seems intent on making Carmine hurt first, break down his fledgling empire before taking him out, and Michael gets it.

He does.

Wants to burn it all down himself, but he’s not like the biker. Doesn’t have this weird shit to help him on his mission of vengeance. Just this one life that he’s willing to spend to get close enough to kill Carmine for what he did.

No second chances, just Michael and this stupid plan that’s led nowhere for too long.

“I want him dead too,” Michael says, sees the biker cock his head.

“I do, that fucker – he killed someone important to me.”

There aren’t enough words in the world for what Gavin was to him, never will be, and that piece of shit Carmine took him away from Michael.

The biker turns his head to look at him, so, so still.

“I want to help,” Michael says.

The biker shakes his head, starts to pace in earnest while Michael watches him.

Sharp, agitated movements, something desperate to it that has Michael reaching out to touch his arm. The biker pulls up short, turns to look directly at Michael and the world slams to a halt.

Michael knows that face.

The little of it he can see past the broken edges of the visor, tanned skin and eyes that are more green than blue. 

More familiar than his own face.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

Michael’s hand tightens on the bikers arm, because this has to be some kind of sick joke. Maybe he took a hit to the head somewhere back there and didn’t realize. Because - 

Michael can't seem to breathe, and the fucker’s watching him with no emotion on his face and that's wrong, it’s so fucking _wrong_.

“...You son of a bitch,” Michael says, unable to look away, heart pounding in his chest.

When the fucker doesn’t respond, doesn't fucking _blink_ , the fragile hope in Michael’s chest splinters apart. Turns dark, _angry_.

“You son of a bitch,” Michael hisses, shoves him back a step, and then another when he still doesn't react. “You stupid - “

Words are tangled up tight with the emotion clogging his throat and he just wants – Christ, he doesn’t know what he wants.

Michael laughs, this ragged, broken thing and he turns away from the biker, moves away from him because he doesn’t, he _can’t_ \- 

_Fuck._

Behind him there’s the rustle of fabric. Sound of the biker pulling off that fucking helmet of his, and a tired sigh.

And then he hears voice he hasn’t heard in what feel like forever. It’s a little rusty with disuse, but still so fucking familiar it hurts.

“Hey, Michael boi.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Michael turns, Gavin has the helmet in his hands and this small, awkward smile on his face.

He looks...uncertain. 

That hesitant little smile Michael knows so well. The one he’d get when he’d done something stupid or messed up and fucking well knew it, couldn’t apologize like a normal person, no. 

Just. 

A mess of issues and stupid about it all, and hoping Michael would somehow be able to read his mind. Understand that whatever had happened wasn’t his intent. That there really was a reason the toaster was suddenly in pieces, or the plumbing was fucked up. 

A whole slew of things gone wrong that shouldn’t have, really, Michael, he didn’t expect it to happen.

After a moment Gavin’s eyes slide away from Michael’s, shoulders hunching because Michael cannot stop scowling at him.

Anger burning hot in his chest because this stupid bastard. This stupid motherfucker who got himself in trouble, got in so deep someone wanted him dead.

Fucking Gavin who made Michael promise him months and months and months ago. Goddamn _years_ , that if he was ever in trouble he’d go to Gavin. 

Ask for help and Gavin would give it, no questions asked because it was just that simple. They’d figure it together, no reason to go it alone when it was the two of them against the world.

Partners in crime, the two of them, and this stupid little giggle from Gavin because they’d both had a little too much to drink. Gotten the kind of serious you do sometimes when you’re like that.

Dumb jokes and stories, this sideways slide into the heart of things without a by your leave. Gavin worrying about Michael and the bruises and worse he’d come back to their shitty apartment with sometimes. 

“Your arm,” Gavin says suddenly, frowning slightly as he sets his helmet down on the table and moves over to Michael.

Gavin moves slow, careful as he reaches out and pulls Michael’s arm toward him. Looking to him as though he’s asking permission as he examines a cut on Michael’s arm visible through the ripped sleeve of his jacket. 

Michael fights the urge to yank his arm back, annoyance rising because now that Gavin’s called attention to the injury he can feel the damn thing. Feel a myriad of small injuries he must have gotten earlier and hadn’t paid attention to with his focus on getting them out of there. Quashes the feeling as he watches Gavin.

Concerned frown on his face so damn familiar it hurts. Sharp ache in his chest that’s almost a physical pain, because he never thought he’d get to see it again.

“I don’t think you’ll need stitches for it,” Gavin says, and looks up to meet Michael's eyes. “But you should put a bandage on it at least.”

He glances at the abandoned bag with the medical supplies and cocks his head just so, a gesture Michael knows so fucking well because he’s seen it so many times before. 

Just another one of the things he should have picked up on earlier. Another one of Gavin’s quirks and ticks Michael had seen the biker use and never thought to connect to Gavin. 

So much evidence in front of him leading to the biker’s identity and Michael just never seeing any of it because why the fuck would he expect to when Gavin was dead?

The Gavin he’d known was an awkward, clumsy dork who was good with computers and loved playing with his cameras. An idiot who never let on he wasn’t quite who Michael thought he was, but then again the reverse is true because Michael did the same, didn’t he?

Lies upon lies, and all of them mean to protect each other because it was dangerous not to.

_This fucking city._

And maybe it’s not just Los Santos to blame for all of this. The secrets they both hid from each other, thinking they were protecting each other and doing more harm than good in the end, but it’s easier to cast blame than it is to face up to how stupid they've both been about this.

The fact that somehow Gavin’s here, looking at Michael with those eyes of his. Big and worried and holding himself like he thinks - 

“I can’t do this on my own,” Michael hears himself say as he stares at Gavin’s hands. Fingers curled around his wrist, thumb resting over his pulse point.

Gavin blinks, mouth opening to ask why – always with he questions because he has a curious fucking mind doesn’t he. Never satisfied until he’s picked something apart, gotten a good look at what makes it tick and finds a way to put it back together again. (Not always right, but he tries.)

“I’m right handed, idiot.”

The cut’s on his right arm, and Michael could manage to slap a rough bandage on it, keep from making things worse, but it won’t be pretty. Might as well not even bother for all the good it will do him.

“I’ll fuck it up,” Michael says, and shrugs at the look Gavin gives him.

Michael doesn’t know how any of this is possible. How Gavin is standing in front him, solid and real and so goddamned familiar.

Watching Michael with that worried look he used to get when Michael would come home after a rough job and lie to him about it. Tell him some idiot at work had run into him, or that he’d hit his head on something. Nothing important, serious, so no need to worry about it. 

Nothing but lies mixed tied up with the truth like that was just the way things had to be and why change things if it worked?

Gavin patching him up with this little frown between his eyes and so, so careful no to ask even though Michael could tell he wanted to more than anything. 

Gavin starts to let go.

“Gavin.”

Gavin freezes, eyes skittering away from Michael’s.

He still looks the same.

Dumb hair that looks like it never met a comb it liked and that fucking nose of his. Laugh lines around his eyes that Michael always hoped he’d contributed to. The mole under his eye, so many other things Michael was worried he’d forgotten, and it’s killing him a little.

This whole mess is killing him because he can’t do this alone the way he was so convinced he could.

Just him against Carmine’s organization like one of those godawful movies Michael loved as a kid. 

Good triumphing over evil, white hats against black hats. Scenarios where good always won because that’s how the stories were supposed to go. 

Somewhere along the way he forgot on of the hardest lessons he ever learned, forgot that life isn’t like that. Realized just how fine the line between good and evil is, and which side he landed on as he grew up, made the kinds of choices he did.

The way people like Carmine with money and power behind them win out more often than not. That people like him and Gavin get trampled underfoot and forgotten, because they were just a statistic in the end.

Michael’s been lucky so far. Luckier than anyone has a right to be, but that same luck is bound to run out on him sooner rather than later with his hard he’s been pushing things.

And for whatever reason Gavin’s here, he’s back.

He’s the asshole half the city’s talking about. 

This incredible force – anger and fury and something else to him Michael can’t explain, doesn’t have the words for - going after Carmine and his organization with equally single-minded determination. 

He’s done more to hurt Carmine in these past few weeks than Michael has in the entire time he found out about his involvement in Gavin’s death. Cracked the foundations under Carmine’s feet, but it’s still not enough.

Worse, after tonight they know Gavin’s not invincible. They managed to make him bleed, proved they can hurt him. _Kill_ him, and they’re not about to forget that after what he’s done to them, cost them.

“I can’t do this on my own,” Michael says again, and he sounds like he picked smoking back up. Voice fucked up because he’s not just talking about Carmine and his hired guns, doesn’t think he could take losing Gavin again. “I’ll fuck it up if I try.”

He’s been driven by anger and grief, this need to make whoever was responsible pay and no real plan behind any of it. Belated realization that he never expected to make it as far as he has. Expected Carmine or Rat-face to sniff him out, realize what he was up to and make an example out of him the way they did with Gavin.

He’d only gotten as close as he has through sheer luck, and doesn’t know where to go from here. 

Gavin stares at him for a long moment, and Michael can’t read him. Can’t tell what he’s thinking, or even if he knows him as well as he thought he did _to_ be able to read him.

“Let’s look at your arm first,” Gavin says, eyes dropping away from Michael’s as he goes to get the medical supplies. “Wouldn’t want it to get infected.”

Michael watches him walk away and wonders what the hell he as expecting. For Gavin to jump at the chance to team up with him like this is some kind of stupid superhero movie? 

“Yeah, alright,” Michael sighs, and follows Gavin to the cramped bathroom where the lighting is better.

Gavin gives him a small smile as Michael sits on the edge of the tub. Helps him peel off his jacket, managing to reopen the wound a little in the process. Dried blood gluing it to his skin and it's not pretty, hurts like hell as Gavin cleans the wound up best he can with their available supplies.

His hands are cool, which isn’t a surprise because Gavin always runs cold, but there’s a different quality now that makes Michael uneasy.

“I’d hate to be the one to find that,” Gavin says, seeming to pick up on his mood and trying for a bit of levity as he tips his head towards the pile of bloodstained washcloths he tossed into the bathtub.

Michael snorts.

“I’d hate to be the one to find anything in this dump,” Michael shoots back because there’s not enough money in the world for that.

Gavin makes a face, gagging as his mind pulls up likely scenarios, and Michael’s chest aches because it’s such a familiar sight. Michael fucking with Gavin because it was always so easy, and cackling about it because he’s that kind of asshole.

“You’re a bloody bully Michael,” Gavin says, wounded note to his voice like he hasn't learned better by now. 

And Michael - 

“Literally,” he says, unable to stop himself as Gavin spreads ointment over the cut and tapes a gauze pad over it.

Gavin sighs, world-weary and such a brave little toaster for putting up with the terrible shit Michael puts him through, and it hurts how normal this feels.

Gavin leaves his hands on Michael's arm, frown on his face as he traces the edges of old scars from Michael’s line of work. 

A few are from knives, but there’s a bullet graze near his elbow. Road rash that never healed quite right from a spill off a bike running from the cops once. More scars and marks left from countless fights, scrapes, he’s been in hidden by his clothes. 

Souvenirs of a life that’s probably going kill him before long.

“Gav?”

Gavin reluctantly pulls his hands away and looks at Michael. 

“You’re not going to stop even if I say no, are you.”

That.

“No,” Michael says, calm, even.

It would be better if they worked together on taking Carmine down because Gavin’s the one with all the cards here. Found something that spooked Carmine enough to have him killed, and Michael’s just been fumbling in the dark. 

But if Gavin says no, chooses not to work together with him Michael’s just going to keep going until he succeeds or gets himself killed, whichever comes first. Can’t just let it go, even with Gavin here in front of him now. 

The worst part about is that Michael’s still a coward, isn’t he. Can’t tell Gavin why he’s so determined to do this. All those words he had time to figure out after Gavin died, things he swore to himself he’d tell him if he ever got the chance to seem to have dried up and crumbled to dust on the back of his tongue.

Gavin huffs a laugh, and sits back to look at Michael.

“I can’t stay,” Gavin says, and waves a hand toward the window they can just see through the open door of the bathroom, sunlight breaking through the curtains. “There are rules, limits, to this. To whatever I am.”

Michael feels that uneasiness from earlier rear its head. 

“What, are you a fucking vampire now? Do you burn in the sunlight?”

Gavin gives Michael this look, like maybe Michael’s parents dropped him on his head as a kid one time too many.

“What? No. You’ve seen me in the daylight before, haven’t you?” he says, and his tone of voice backs up the look on his face perfectly. “But I used a lot of energy tonight, didn’t I, and I have to go back.”

There’s something about the way Gavin says it that sends a chill down his spine.

“Go back?” he asks, trying to hold Gavin’s gaze but the fucker is a champ at avoidance. 

Motherfucking gold medalist.

“For a little bit,” Gavin clarifies, still not meeting his eyes. “Just to rest.”

“Gav - “

“Give it a day or two, yeah?” Gavin pulls the latex gloves he was using off and slings them into the trash can under the bathroom sink. Gets to his feet. “Try not to do anything stupid before then, and we’ll talk about things. Get everything sorted.”

Like they’re talking about whose turn it is to do the dishes or why the fuck Gavin can’t remember not to throw a half empty cup of coffee in the trash from across the room. Like it’s something simple, stupid, _small_.

Like Michael isn’t terrified that Gavin won’t come back. Will just be gone, or that Michael hallucinated all of this. Hit his head and ended up in some stupid movie coma only to wake up and find out it was a dream all along.

Gavin finally looks at him, bright smile on his face like this whole situation isn’t fucked.

“No promises,” Michael says, hands clenching where they rest on his lap, grasping on to the sting, burn, that runs through his injured arm. “Don’t fucking stop for coffee on your back, you fuck.”

There’s a mirror over the sink facing the tub Michael’s sitting on. Dirty and cracked, and Michael stares at his reflection in it as Gavin pauses to squeeze his shoulder as he walks past, hand burning cold where it touches him.

Michael doesn’t hear the outer door when Gavin leaves, and it’s a long, long time before he can make himself get up.

========

Jeremy knows something is up when Michael slinks back in later that morning.

Would have to be blind not to given the state Michael’s in even after he made an effort to clean up. His clothes are still fucked and there’s no adrenaline to allow him to ignore the fact he’s hurting.

Still, Jeremy doesn’t say a damn thing.

Michael gets this _look_ from him. The kind of worry Jeremy shouldn’t waste on a shitty friend like him, but that’s just like him, isn’t it.

The same way it’s just like him when Jeremy sits down next to Michael on the couch and pushes a cup of coffee into his hands to help warm him up. Sets a plate down with one of the donuts he picked up a few days ago.

Pretends like he’s not keeping an eye on Michael to make sure he’s not about to keel over on him right there and then. Force Jeremy to drag him down to a clinic or the emergency room. 

Turns on the television so they can listen to the news, hear all about the commotion the night before in the industrial district. Fire fighters still on site, and various news crews vying for the best shots. Solemn faced reporters going over what they know so far, batting theories and rumors back and forth with their counterparts behind the anchor desk back at the news station.

“Looks like a mess,” Jeremy notes, taking a sip of his coffee and carefully not looking at Michael. 

Michael sighs, slumping a little into the soft cushions of the couch.

It’s so goddamn tempting to just tell Jeremy everything. What’s been going on to make him worry about Michael so much when he doesn’t deserve it, but Michael wouldn’t even know where to start without sounding like damned lunatic.

Weird shit happens in Los Santos all the time, but this? 

Got to be enough to get him locked away, and he’s not sure it wouldn’t be warranted at this point.

“Yeah,” Michael says, and splits the doughnut between them as a peace offering. 

He can’t tell Jeremy what’s going on, but he sure as fuck appreciates that he wants to help.

Jeremy snorts, flipping through stations until he lands on an early morning cartoon.

Bright colors and weird animal characters with no real plot to speak of. Simple cartoonish bullshit accompanied by whimsical music that is clearly meant to be a punishment of some sort because it’s all so _bad_.

Which is fair, really.

Better than what Michael deserves, that’s for damn certain.

========

Rat-face calls Michael and tells him to lie low for now. That Carmine and his top people are coming up with a plan to deal with Gavin once and for all and they’ll contact him when they need him.

Michael plays his part, gives him _yes sir_ , and _no sir_ , and _I understand, sir_ , and feels this thread of fear wrap tight around his heart because he still hasn’t heard from Gavin.

Doesn’t know where he is, if he’s okay. Doesn’t know a goddamned thing, and the not knowing is killing him, but there’s not a lot Michael can about it until Gavin decides to show his face again. (Michael’s half afraid he won’t, that he just imagined the whole thing and Jeremy’s not wrong about Michael losing his damn mind.)

He makes a few half-hearted attempts to crack Gavin’s password, and watches daytime dramas that he doesn’t pay attention to. Too worried about Gavin and what Carmine and his flunkies are up to to focus long enough to understand the plot.

Pretends like he doesn’t see the worried looks Jeremy keeps tossing his way and does his best to act like he’s not slowly going out of his mind.

After the fifth day it gets old, and something drags Michael back to the apartment building he and Gavin lived in.

There’s not much left to it anymore. It’s been hollowed out by the fire, scavengers and worse in and out picking over the bones, looking for anything of value and coming up empty-handed.

Michael kicks aside a piece of charred wood and carefully makes his way through the rubble left behind from the fire. The place smells faintly of rot and decay over the lingering stench of smoke, or maybe that last is his mind overlaying memories with what his eyes are seeing, who the fuck knows.

“Christ,” he mutters, walking into what used to be the his – their -old living room.

Barely big enough for that stupid couch Gavin made him haul up several flights of stairs so long ago.

Stupid heavy and ugly as all hell, but something about it had caught Gavin’s eye and he’d spent money they couldn’t really afford on it. Big, stupid grin on his face and cajoling note to his voice, and Michael?

He always did have a hard time saying no to Gavin, even when he knew better.

So he lugged the fucking hideous thing upstairs while Gavin fretted and fussed. Offered up completely useless advice as he “helped”. Dropped his end of the couch more times than Michael cares to remember, mumbling sheepish apologies and laughing about it.

The damn couch is a pile of blackened wood now, melted bits of metal. 

So much of their lives here gone up in fire and nothing but rubble and ash under his feet and if that isn’t some kind of shitty metaphor, Michael doesn’t know what is.

Michael lifts his head when he hears footsteps behind him, hands curling into loose fists at his side because he knows who it is.

Heard that fucking bike earlier, the low purr of its engine as it pulled up.

“Fire department said it was faulty wiring.”

Bad wiring in an old building, and shit like that happens all the in a city like this where code enforcement is so lax. No one gives much of a damn unless it makes the news, and even then it barely makes a ripple in the news cycle.

Why would it, when this is the kind of place where the police look the other way when it comes to crime all the fucking time? When people _tsk_ over a murder and shake their heads before moving on because it’s just another statistic? 

Always such a shame, and so convenient that it happens to someone else.

Gavin doesn’t say anything, but Michael can hear him sifting through the mess, looking for something. 

Michael finally turns around, almost expecting Gavin to disappear the moment he does like that fucked up Greek myth about the asshole who went to the underworld in search of his wife after she died.

But this is reality, for whatever that’s worth, and Gavin doesn’t fade away when Michael looks at him.

Seems solid and real as he sweeps a pile of debris aside with his foot, glancing around with this odd frown on his face.

“Michael,” Gavin says, frustrated note to his voice. “Where was the bedroom?”

Of all the things he was expecting to hear from Gavin, that wasn’t anywhere on the list.

“What?”

Gavin looks frustrated, annoyed. 

“Well it’s not like I had the floor plans memorized, now is it?” Gavin asks, turning his head away when Michael keeps staring.

They lived in that shitty apartment of theirs for years. Tiny and cramped, hardly enough room in it for the two of them and their shit. The kind of place you learn where everything is real quick or otherwise end up with stubbed toes and bumps on the back of your head moving around in the dark.

Th single bedroom they shared because they were adults who could handle sharing a bed with their couch being uncomfortable as hell. Always a bout of insomnia or work project that couldn’t wait for a reasonable hour, some other excuse that would keep one of them awake and trying to be considerate of each other.

Gavin had been prone to those kind of nights more often than Michael, ended up knowing it better than he did.

Gavin still won’t meet his eyes and Michael lets it drop because looking around now, he can see how it would be hard to pinpoint where the hallway ends and the bedroom begins. Where everything should have been. 

“Over here, I think,” Michael says, and moves past Gavin to gesture towards a pile of debris where the doorway to the bedroom door used to be. “What are you looking for?”

Gavin twitches a shoulder in a shrug as he maps out where the boundaries of the room would have been.

“Of course,” he mumbles to himself, and sets to clearing away what looks like part of the ceiling and half of the wall.

“Don’t just stand there, give me a hand, you bastard,” Gavin calls over his shoulder in a fit of pique, and Michael snorts as he goes over to help.

Follows Gavin’s orders as they dig out a small area roughly where the bed used to be. Stands back when Gavin drives the heel of his foot down on a section of floor to reveal a hidden compartment containing a fire safe.

“Maybe it was worth what I paid for it after all,” Gavin muses as he crouches down to examine it for damage, eyes meeting Michael’s over it. “Did you get the package?”

Nice and casual, like Gavin’s asking about the weather or something equally normal.

As if Gavin hadn’t planned ahead, expected for something to go wrong with whatever he’d been doing.

For someone to kill him.

Like he hadn’t taken the necessary precautions to ensure that whatever he’d found made it to Michael, that he’d gotten him everything he’d need to start up a new life somewhere, like that something people just fucking _did_.

Goddamn, it makes Michael angry all over again just thinking about it. About Gavin realizing how much trouble he was in and taking all these steps to protect Michael without giving a fucking thought to how he’d feel about things in the aftermath of his death.

As though Michael wouldn’t lose sleep wondering what he could have done differently to get Gavin to trust him enough to ask for help. What he’d done to make him think he wouldn’t drop everything if Gavin had just fucking asked.

“Yeah,” Michael says. “About that.”

Gavin looks up, frown on his face like he doesn’t know what the fucking problem is.

“Why didn’t you come to me with this?” Michael asks, hating the way his voice sounds rough, cracks showing through because Gavin’s secrets got him killed and Michael was too stupid to ask. “I could have fucking helped.”

Gavin stares at Michael like he’s trying to think up a lie, some excuse or reason that he thinks Michael’s just going to buy and that’ll be the end of that. No reason to get bothered over any of it.

“I don’t care if you didn’t know I was involved in this shit,” Michael says, before Gavin can interrupt him, say something that will just make him angrier. “I would have fucking helped you, Gavin. Jesus fuck, you know I would have.”

If nothing else, they were friends and Michael thought Gavin had known that. Known Michael would have done anything for him if he asked.

But he hadn’t, had he.

Had just dug himself deeper into whatever trouble he’d found that it had gotten him killed, and Michael left behind to pick up the pieces of his life. Move on, like it ever would have been so simple.

“Carmine’s a monster,” Gavin says, low and quiet. This fierceness to his voice Michael's never heard. His hand is splayed over the top of the fire safe like he’s keeping whatever secrets are inside from spilling out like Pandora’s box for better or worse. “You have no idea what he’s capable of, Michael.”

Michael can guess, given what happened to Gavin. The things he picked up when he was trying to find a way into Carmine’s organization. Bits and pieces he overheard from the others once he did.

The way Jeremy and others Michael’s come into contact with on his search for answers have warned him away from the fucker. Want nothing to do with him, which says so goddamned much in a city like this.

“By the time I knew what kind of monster he was, it was too late to back out of things, and I wanted to keep you out of it,” Gavin says, gaze focused on the damn fire safe under his hand. “I thought if he didn’t know about you, you’d be safe. That he couldn’t use you against me if he found out what I was doing.”

Oh, Christ.

“He was toying with me the whole time,” Gavin says, and his laugh sounds all broken and wrong, jagged little pieces to it. “Let me think I was getting away with things, that everything was going to turn out okay. That I didn’t manage bollocks everything up.”

“Gav - “

“I had a plan, Michael,” Gavin says. “ _I had a plan_.”

But life – especially here in Los Santos – has a way of fucking you over if you’re not careful. (Sometimes even when you are.)

Michael stares at Gavin. 

At this fucking idiot who tried so hard to keep Michael safe with no one there to watch his back, no one to keep _him_ safe. Lying like his life depended on to keep Michael in the dark, and managing it all right up until the end.

Goddamn.

“You fucking idiot,” Michael snarls, and drags Gavin into a hug. Closes his eyes at Gavin’s startled intake of breath, like he was expecting Michael to hit him instead, like he would have deserved it, and holds on tighter.

There’s no way to change what happened, no point in second-guessing Gavin’s choices when it would be nothing but cruelty now. Salt in fresh wounds, but maybe, maybe, they can find a way to make things right now if Gavin will let him.

“I have to go,” Gavin says, some time later, even though he makes no move to let go of Michael. “Michael, I have to go.”

Michael wants to ask him why. Plead with him to stay, maybe, because he knows Gavin’s not going to give up on Carmine. Knows he’s still going to after him even though it almost got him killed (again, a part of Michael’s mind points out, _again_ ) last time.

“Be careful, asshole,” he says, because he knows he can’t stop Gavin even if he tries. Might drive him away altogether if he does. “They’re planning something.”

Gavin laughs, like this is all a fucking joke.

“Of course they are,” he says, and then he’s untangling himself from Michael's hold, this sad smile on his face that’s breaking Michael’s heart. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Like he has any fucking right to say something like that after everything that’s happened.

Still.

“Same goes for you, asshole,” he says, and watches Gavin walk away.

========

Gavin goes on his hit and runs, and Michael hears about it on the news afterwards.

Watches the so-called experts attempt to analyze what little data about him they have. Pinpoint his methodology, reason for his attacks, with little success.

Gavin’s smart about things, switches up his plan of attack even as he focuses on Carmine’s allies with his organization laying low after the ambush.

Chipping away at his support, whittling away his options one by one by one.

In the midst of all this, Jeremy’s crew has him running around doing damage control. He’s out at all hours and starting to look like shit warmed over.

According to him Gavin hasn’t gone after them, shouldn’t have reason to, but they’re understandably concerned. Their allies are understandably concerned, and there’s not much Michael can do to help him without revealing too much.

Feels like an asshole as he watches as Jeremy spends less and less time at the apartment until he might as well not be there at all.

So of course, of course, that’s when Gavin comes to visit.

Picks a day when Jeremy’s out, or maybe he’s been watching them the whole time and waiting for just the right moment.

Either way, there’s no mistaking the sound his bike makes when it pulls up outside. 

When Michael opens the door, Gavin has his bike helmet tucked under one arm and he looks - 

He looks tired. 

Exhausted.

Like someone at the end of their rope and barely hanging on, and he asks after the package he sent to Michael.

“Why do you want it?”

Gavin opens his mouth to speak, and stops. 

Eyes narrowing as he looks at Michael.

“You don’t know.”

Michael doesn’t bother denying it. Not when he’s been trying to crack Gavin’s fucking password for so long, been tempted to drag Jeremy and Matt into this whole mess when he couldn’t.

“No,” Michael says, and decides to try on some honesty between them for size. “But I sure as hell want to.”

He wants to know what Gavin found that was so important, so fucking terrible that he couldn’t tell Michael about. What Carmine wanted him dead for.

Gavin stares at him for a long, long moment. Long enough that Michael thinks he’s going to pull another one of his disappearing tricks. Claim he can’t stay, that he has to leave and then fuck off the was he’s been doing for one reason or another, but he doesn’t.

“If I show you,” Gavin says, like he’s still not convinced Michael's serious about this, or maybe just doesn’t want to pull him in any deeper than he already is, “there’s no going back.”

Christ, be more melodramatic.

“Really?” Michael asks. “ _Really_?”

Gavin makes a face, looks away because even he knows that was a little over the top, even with everything else about this clusterfuck.

“It’s...complicated,” Gavin hedges, not quite making eye contact. “And it’s dangerous.”

No shit.

The fact Gavin’s still trying to protect him is as sweet as it is heartbreaking, but it’s a little too late for that now. Michael’s not giving up until Carmine’s dead, and while he’d be thrilled to work with Gavin on that, he’s not going to be deterred if he has to do it on his own.

“Alright,” Gavin says, because he must see all of that in Michael’s expression, or maybe he’s just tired of going it alone. “Alright. Bring the package along because we’re going to need it.”

========

Gavin takes them to several stops around the city. Has this cagey look to him as they pick up packages and other shit he’d stashed, all of them under different names and aliases. 

Sends Michael on ahead with combinations or passwords. Shuffles his feet when he hands over a key and runs a hand through his hair when he tells Michael they’re almost done.

Avoids Michael’s eyes when he looks up from studying the scorched key chain singed tag attached to it like he wouldn’t recognize it as one of Gavin’s. (The way the metal of the key itself feels hot to the touch. Hot enough to burn.)

“There are only three people authorized to access it, and it would be awkward if I went in to collect it,” Gavin says, and flips the visor of his helmet down to end the conversation, a new habit of his that’s already gotten old.

It’s another storage facility. The kind of place that has the kind of security that requires ID to get past the main desk. Only one like it of all the places they’ve been to, and it has him paying even closer attention to things once he goes inside.

Unlike the others, this one is under Gavin’s real name. Paid for in cash with no paper trail to lead back to it and a certain air to the whole thing that feels borderline legal. Very discreet and hush-hush. Guards with weapons showing under their jackets and this veneer of civility that does nothing to hide how dangerous they are under it all.

The woman behind the counter gives Michael a cursory glance when he walks in, finishes up what she’s working on before turning to him with a polite smile.

“I’m here about locker 339?” he says, holding up the key Gavin handed off to him.

Her eyes narrow, but apparently she’s seen worse because she just asks for his driver license to verify he is who he claims to be. Spends a moment to make sure everything is in order before she buzzes him through the security door.

There's an attendant on the other side of the security door to escort him to the lockers, standing just inside the door while Michael checks the contents to Gavin’s.

There’s an external hard drive instead of the USB drives they’ve collected today, as well as several envelopes with Gavin’s handwriting on them.

Feeling oddly guilty, Michael flips through them. There’s one for the dead reporter Gavin wanted Michael to go to, and another addressed to Michael.

It looks older than the others, including to the one he had sent to Michael.

Battered, worn, almost as though Gavin kept it with him for a while before deciding to put it here.

“We have secure rooms,” the attendant says, because Michael's just standing there like an idiot staring down at it. “If you’d like to view your items privately?”

Michael blinks, realizes he’s taken longer than he should have. Was supposed to collect the locker’s contents. Gather up whatever Gavin had squirreled away here and close out his account, not whatever the hell he thinks he’s doing wasting precious time like this.

“No,” Michael says, sliding the letters into the interior pocket of his jacket along with the external hard drive and shuts the locker. “No, that won’t be necessary.”

He gets an odd look for that, but the attendant lets it slide. Probably attributes it to grief – their records are up to date, after all – and quietly leads the way back to the front desk.

Michael settles things with the woman there, something final about it that has him hurrying back out to Gavin. As though sighing his name on the dotted line is what’s going to be what sends him back to wherever he keeps disappearing off to, ridiculous as it sounds.

It’s raining outside the way it had been threatening to all afternoon and Michael instinctively pulls his jacket around him tighter to protect the external hard drive and letters.

There are dark gray clouds overhead, flashes of lightning in in the distance and the faint sound of thunder rolling in off the hills around Los Santos. Heavy downpour that cutting down on visibility, and the world around them muted.

Gavin, thank God, is still out there on that bike of his. Head tipped up to stare at the sky, rain trailing down the smooth face of his helmet.

“You got it, then?”

Gavin turns to look at him, and something about it – his posture, the slow movement – looks tired.

Far more so than when he appeared at the apartment earlier, like the weather is sapping his energy away.

“I – Yeah,” Michael says, nervous and unsettled for no reason he can name. “What - “

“One last stop,” Gavin says, and starts his bike, low growl almost drowned out by the rain, something almost like laughter in his voice. “Try to keep up, Michael.”

And then the damn cheater peels off, tires squealing as he gets one hell of a head start. Manages to weave through lanes of traffic the way he damn well knows Michael can’t in his car, the fucking _asshole_.

========

Michael catches up to Gavin at a red light a few streets over. 

Glares when the asshole looks straight back at him and revs his bike’s engine. This full-throated growl he can feel through the floorboards of his car. It rises in pitch to a scream when the light turns green and Gavin speeds off, just missing the asshole who thought he could beat the yellow coming the opposite direction through the intersection.

Michael leans on the horn, flips the fucker off and races after Gavin who, terrifyingly enough, has gotten even more reckless now than he was before if that’s even possible.

Maybe it has something to do with what he is now, whatever that is. Doesn’t think anything can hurt him now, or maybe he just doesn’t care. (Michael isn’t sure which possibility scares him more.)

Gavin takes them through back streets to a quiet little neighborhood in just one more rundown part of the city. It’s late enough by now that late enough that most of its residents are either asleep or working the night shift.

A handful few people are outside smoking or talking bullshit, bursts of noise every so often, laughter echoing off the brick and stone walls of the buildings around them. Shady figures lurking just out of range of the streetlights. 

“Safe house for when I’m...here,” Gavin says, entirely too cryptically as he gestures at himself when Michael gives him a questioning look. “No one else knows about it.”

That’s - 

“Huh,” Michael says, adding it to the things he never knew about Gavin and wondering how many more there are left to discover. 

Gavin lets them inside an apartment on the third floor. Shabby little place a few steps down from their old one. Decked out with tacky furniture and terrible carpeting. Has one hell of a lived-in look to it.

There’s a goddamned murder board up on one wall. Maps of Los Santos and the neighboring areas with what seems to be color-coded pins. News articles and other shit hanging up alongside the maps, and a laptop on the coffee table. 

Goddamned plethora of old mugs of coffee and empty energy drink cans next to it. A medical kit or two, rust brown splotches and smears on the lid, the latches.

Michael looks up, catches Gavin watching him taking all of it in. 

“You - “

Gavin smiles, this twisted thing, and gestures for Michael to set the boxes and packages on the coffee table as he shoves things aside to make room for them.

“I’m not invincible, Michael,” he murmurs, and leaves it at that as he starts his laptop up.

Like that’s not a fucking kick to the chest, hearing Gavin admit to it even after seeing the proof for himself. Imagining Gavin retreating here to lick his wounds alone, even with that healing factor he seems to have. (Knowing how fucking much Carmine and Rat-face want him dead, how hard they’ve tried to make it happen.)

Michael watches him for a long moment, feeling too wrung out to argue.

Much.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters, looking around at the mess.

Gavin winces, slides him a look. A Little defensive, a little annoyed. Dumbass all the way.

“I’ve been busy Michael,” he grumbles, because they lived together too long for him not to know what Michael’s thinking. About all yelling that isn’t happening because what even is this situation right now? “Haven’t had the time to _tidy_.”

It doesn’t hold the usual bite it would because Gavin’s distracted. Rooting through the pile in front of him to organize the drives and memory cards according to some bizarre system of his. Doing his damnedest to ignore Michael as he works.

That’s so much like him that Michael can’t help but laugh, scrubbing a hand over his face as he gets up to collects empty cans and dirty mugs to put in the sink. Give them both a little time to gather themselves for what’s ahead. 

Shakes his head at how familiar this much is in spite of the circumstances, following along to clean up after Gavin. Oddly soothing as Michael finds an old grocery bag for the cans and shoves as many of them in there as he can.

Opens the fridge to find more energy drinks and – of all things – a box of baking soda. Containers of take-out shoved to the back that are well past being remotely edible that immediately go in the trash. 

Apparently still human enough to eat and drink, or as capable of it as still being the same fucking slob he always has been, whatever that means.

Christ.

Michael’s contemplating the task of cleaning out the cheap little coffee maker when Gavin calls him back into the living room.

“Michael,” he says. Stops. Fidgets. “Michael, you don’t have to – You can still leave.”

Michael stares at him.

“Take the money and leave, go back to Jersey if you want,” Gavin says, flicking a hand at the packages they recovered earlier, more than just USB drives and memory cards. 

Enough money to get both them far, far away from Los Santos. False identities and all the paperwork to go along with them to go somewhere Carmine can never find them and disappear, if such a place exists. 

No.

Where _Michael_ can disappear while Gavin stays in Los Santos to finish what he started, make sure Carmine won’t find Michael.

Lie to him, claim he’ll be right behind him and Michael waiting for a day that won’t come, because he knows this little idiot, doesn’t he.

All the lies between them and some things that never changed because they’re such an intrinsic part of the people they are under it all.

Gavin’s looking at him like he wants Michael to just give in. Take the easy way out even thought they both know it’s too late for that. That Michael was fucking clear about things from the outset, and _still._

He’s still trying to get Michael to see sense, to do the smart thing. Give up on his stupid quest for vengeance like it doesn’t mean anything. Like Gavin was never worth it.

“No.”

Soft and even, every last bit of Michael’s conviction behind it, because he’ll be damned if he walks away now. Turns his back on Gavin when he can help him this time, do something worthwhile.

“Fuck you, no,” he says, anger starting to bleed into it when Gavin looks like he’s going to try another tack. Come at Michael sideways like he won’t see it coming. “Stop trying of get rid of me and just let me fucking _help._ ”

If his voice breaks a little on that last, neither of them mention it.

Gavin’s hands clench into fists before he lets out his breath on a long exhale that goes a little ragged at the end.

“Okay,” he says as he reaches for his laptop. “Okay, then."

Michael eyes him warily because Gavin folded too easily, backed down way too fast for him to believe this is the last time they’re going to do this.

“I had a system,” Gavin says, darting a look at Michael when he sits next to him. “Didn’t want Carmine or any of his people to figure out what I was doing, so I was careful about it.”

Gavin clicks on a file, smile on his face that says he was too naive about just how careful he was.

“Thought I was, anyway,” he admits with a humorless laugh as the file opens.

At first it’s meaningless to Michael, letters and numbers laid out in some kind of code.

Before he can ask about it Gavin plugs one of the USB drives they recovered into the laptop. A prompt pops up and Gavin enters a password and drums his fingers nervously as he waits for it password to be accepted.

“Shipment schedules here,” he says, gesturing to the spreadsheet while they wait for the USB drive to load, taps the screen as a new window for the drive opens. “Codes here.”

It’s empty.

Gavin flashes Michael a cheeky little grin and plays around with file options until hidden folders appear, and opens one showing several files that he clicks on.

More gibberish once they open, but Gavin resizes the windows and places them side by side with the spreadsheet open behind them.

“What the hell am I looking at?” Michael asks, even though he thinks he knows, focus flicking between the windows.

Gavin laughs, tapping the laptop screen again.

“A cipher key,” he says, and highlights a row on the spreadsheet. “Broken up a bit, but you see it, yeah?”

Michael looks at the spreadsheet, and down at the open windows. The cipher key isn’t complete with just the two files he has open to work off, but he can see what Gavin’s talking about. See how it lines up with the spreadsheet, able to figure out just what kind of information he’s looking at.

“This is all outdated,” Gavin says. “Old files I got my hands on in the beginning. Waters – the reporter I told you about in the letter – got a little too close around that time. Spooked Carmine into upping his security around his files. Made getting my hands on them harder.”

Gavin falters there, smile fading.

“Guess I should have known Carmine would know about him,” he says with a tired little laugh. “Bastard was always three steps ahead the whole time.”

Michael watches helplessly as Gavin goes through the files on the other USB drives, the memory cards. Connects them together like a fucking puzzle, shows him more shipping manifests and other incriminating evidence that could put Carmine and his people away for life. 

Hesitates before the connects the external hard drive to the laptop and brings up a media player.

“I planted bugs, listening devices where I could,” Gavin says, palms flat on the coffee table as he plays goddamned audio clips of Carmine ordering hits against his enemies. “It was too risky to try to sneak a camera in, but even this is more than enough to incriminate him.”

Rival crews, gangs that didn’t bow and scrape fast enough for his liking. The rare few willing to cross him, testify against him for protection. Politicians and public figures in Los Santos and beyond who ended up dying in unfortunate accidents here and there. 

The ones he wanted to serve as messages to anyone getting ideas about bringing him down.

Michael’s blood goes cold when he realizes there are several folders listed on the external, and they’re just listening to the first one. 

Wonders distantly if there’s a recording out there Gavin wasn’t able to retrieve in time ordering his own fucking death. (Given the way Gavin’s hands shake a little when he stops the playback on the final recording, he’s had the same thought.)

Carmine’s a bigger deal than anyone realized. His influence is spreading through Los Santos like a disease, creating what threatens to be a vast criminal empire for him and he’s still not satisfied.

“Gavin - “

Gavin shakes his head, and holds up the package he had sent to Michael, pushing on because he promised he’d explain everything, didn’t he. Let Michael know what he’d been doing, what got him killed.

“I put copies of the most recent files I’d gotten on here,” he says. “Along with instructions on how to find the rest.”

All of it neatly packaged up for Waters, items he’d entrusted to Michael. Knew he would have gotten it to Waters because Gavin asked him to in that letter of his, told him it was important and to leave Los Santos when he’d done that and stay the fuck away from it afterwards.

Christ.

Michael stares at the USB drives and memory cards, the contents of Gavin’s stashes spread over the coffee table and can’t help but wonder would have happened if he’d just been able to figure out his fucking password.

Wonders if this could have been over by now, all this damning evidence in the right hands and Los Santos turned upside down to rip Carmine from its underbelly like cancerous growth. If Michael would have found a way to fuck everything up, gone to the wrong person without realizing it, and all of this buried with Michael the way Carmine had tried to bury it with Gavin.

Wonders where they hell they can even go _now_.

“Christ,” Michael says, mind reeling.

Gavin laughs again, the one that’s all wrong on him. So full of bitterness, angry at the edges.

“Carmine knew,” Gavin says, staring blankly at his laptop screen. “He knew I had...I had someone I was protecting. The whole time I worked for him, I thought I was being so goddamned careful. Never let anyone know about you, but he knew there was someone.”

Gavin looks up at him, crooked smile on his face.

“I guess he thought it was Waters. Must have had someone follow me, or someone told him about the two of us when we’d meet. I don’t know.”

And then Carmine had had Waters killed after he’d dealt with Gavin, leaving Michael to fumble in the dark on his own once he got his head out of his ass.

“It was a bit of a shock,” Gavin says, and there’s something to his voice that has Michael worried. Has him watch the way Gavin’s picking at his thumbnail, worrying the skin there. “When I saw you at the compound, I mean. Wasn’t expect that.”

Oh, fuck.

Gavin laughs, mouth twitching like he’s trying to remember how to smile, make it convincing.

“I thought - “ Gavin shakes his head, frowns. “I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me back then, kind of new to everything and all. Not being dead, you know. Thought I was seeing things.”

There’s a stinging sensation at the back of Michael’s eyes, this ache in his chest he’s grown used to since Gavin died as Michael listens to him talk. Explain how he thought Michael had betrayed him, gone from being the one thing he’d been certain of all this time to -

“I wanted to be sure,” Gavin says, more to himself than to Michael. “I _needed_ to be sure.”

Wanted to be sure Michael wasn’t involved with Carmine, Michael knows. That he hadn’t been working with him all along, or just sold him out for the right price, Jesus fuck.

“Gavin - “

Gavin keeps talking, like if he stops now he won’t be able to get the words out later.

“I followed you for a bit after that, figured you wouldn’t be doing all this if you had been working with Carmine the whole time, it just didn’t add up,” he says, like it’s not a fucking knife in Michael’s chest digging deep. “And you were so stupid about it, Michael!”

Gavin’s glaring at him now, all hurt and anger and fear under it all, because he’s already died because of goddamned Carmine. Somehow came back – and fuck if Michael isn’t going to get that story out of him – and here idiot Michael is trying to do the same fucking thing.

Only stupider.

“What the fuck do you want me to say?” Michael asks, so fucking tired. Feels cracked open and bled dry because he hadn’t stopped to think what he was doing might have looked like to Gavin. “The bastard killed you, what did you want me to do? Was I supposed to just walk away? Let him get away with it?”

It sounds so stupid out loud, like a kid angry at the world for not being fair, because this is Los Santos and so much worse goes on here every fucking day. 

No one _cares_ in this city.

People like Gavin, like Michael, they don’t matter here. 

Go missing every fucking day, and no one thinks twice about it. 

“Yes!” Gavin yells, getting up in Michael’s face. So fucking furious, and this light flaring in the back of his eyes. 

The same blue-white of that fucking bike of his that gives Michael pause almost as much as the fact Gavin’s angry enough to yell, to mean it.

“He’s dangerous, you idiot! You should have taken everything I left you and gotten out of the damn city! Started a new life somewhere, _been happy_!”

Gavin’s breathing like he’s run a goddamned marathon, chest heaving and so damn scared under that anger he's wearing like armor.

“But you didn’t, did you. Just marched right on into the lion’s den like you had a bloody playdate scheduled!”

“Oh my God, _no_ ,” Michael says, even though Gavin’s uncomfortably close to the truth with that. “I had a plan too, asshole.”

Gavin’s still so fucking smart, though. Knows Michael well enough to know the kind of plan he’d come up with.

The stupidly suicidal kind, because he’s an idiot. Blunt fucking weapon compared to Gavin.

“What was your plan then, Michael?” he asks, so very quiet. “Tell me, Michael. What was your plan?”

It feels like Michael’s chest is caught in a vise, no way to shake it loose with Gavin this close after losing him the way he had. Everything Gavin showed him, told him, tonight and stupid, stupid Michael trying to play catch-up the way he always has when Gavin’s involved.

“He took the most important person in my life away,” Michael says, because that’s always been at the heart of this for him, this one simple truth. “And I’m going to kill him for that.”

Whatever it takes.

Gavin freezes.

Goes so still Michael doesn’t think he’s even breathing, and Michael lets him see everything. No point in hiding anything anymore when all their secrets haven’t done them any goddamned good.

Knows he’s probably fucking things up here. That there has to be a better way of doing this, damn sure there’s a better time and place for it, but he’s just so fucking tired of waiting on them to come around. (Already wasted too much time before, and Gavin had died without knowing what he means to Michael, and goddamn but this is selfish of him.)

“You stupid bastard,” Gavin hisses, pulling away from him as he stumbles to his feet.

Michael reaches for him, but Gavin ducks away. Expression shuttered as he grabs his helmet he carelessly dropped onto a side table earlier, makes his way to the front door.

“Gavin!”

Michael follows, but stops just short of arm’s length when he sees the way Gavin’s holding himself. (Fragile in a way he’s never been, like the slightest breeze might be enough to shatter him and send the pieces flying.)

Gavin stops, ducks his head as he pulls the helmet on and glances back at him.

“I need to think,” he says, and then he’s gone.

========

Michael doesn’t know what to do after Gavin leaves, suddenly terrified that he’s pushed him too far too fast this time. That this is the thing that makes him leave. 

Go back to where he goes when he’s not here, wherever that is, and Jesus Christ there’s still so much he still doesn’t know. (Might never know now because he just had to lay his cards on the table like that, think doing so would make things better sometime.

Jesus Christ, but Michael’s an idiot.

As much as he wants to go after Gavin, he knows he can’t. Has already pushed him hard enough as it is, doesn’t want to risk making things worse.

And he doesn’t want to leave the evidence Gavin worked so hard to gather, sacrificed his fucking life for just sitting here without anyone watching over it, so he waits.

He waits and hopes like hell Gavin’s going to come back at some point and feels useless and stupid as he does.

Picks his phone up off the coffee table where he left it before his cleaning spree and Gavin’s reveal, and fucks around with it. Deletes old apps and other shit he doesn’t need anymore and ends up scrolling through his contacts.

Stops he lands on Gavin’s, and wonders what would happen if he called him now.

Gavin’s phone was lost in the “crash”, but his account is still active. Bullshit clerical errors and something having to do with company policy because his name is the only one connected to his account and they won’t give Michael the time of day.

He doubts Gavin would pick up now, would probably just let it go to voicemail and delete whatever message he’d leave. 

And honestly, Michael can’t find it in him to blame him if he did after that little shitshow, so.

“Idiot,” Michael mutters, and keeps scrolling.

Stops again when Jeremy’s name pops up, and almost calls him before he thinks better of it. Jeremy’s with his crew handling the city-wide crisis Gavin’s caused, managing to put the scare into anyone with criminal leanings.

All the crews and petty little gangs in a panic over what his next move is going to be, like they haven’t figured out that he only goes after very specific targets.

And even though Jeremy reassured Michael that his crew is sure to be safe from Gain, they’re smart enough to be concerned. 

It’s still tempting to call him though, because Jeremy is a hell of a lot smarter than Michael. Solid and steady and has more common sense to him than you’d expect given his life choices. A voice of reason when it’s needed, and goddamn is it needed now.

Michael fucked up tonight, and he knows it. Spooked Gavin because he was an idiot and now - 

“Fuck,” Michael sighs, gaze drifting back to Gavin’s laptop and the files still open on it.

Flips his phone back onto the coffee table as he slides over see if he can make better sense of them.

He spends a few hours slogging through the sheer amount of information Gavin’s put together, learning more about Carmine’s operations than he honestly ever wanted to. 

Michael knew the fucker was involved with just about everything you’d expect to find in a place like Los Santos, but never suspected the extent of his involvement.

Traffics drugs, weapons. _People_ , and Michael wants a shower just reading the damn files. Can’t imagine how Gavin must have felt being involved in it, taking the risks he had.

Listens to the recordings again, struck by how cold, indifferent Gavin sounds in the ones he must have been wired up to get. Like he’s not affected at all by what Carmine’s doing. That it’s all just _business_ to him, another callous bastard in a city full of them, when he used to think Gavin was a shit liar.

Used to think Gavin couldn’t bluff his way through a game of cards for anything, and yet - 

And yet, it makes a surprising amount of sense with how much time they spent lying to each other about what they did. Lies come so goddamned easily to them about it in order to protect one another from the truth that Michael hadn’t suspected a damn thing until the end. 

When Gavin must have been under so much stress from dealing with Carmine he didn’t have anything left to lie convincingly to Michael. 

And why should he, when Michael was so fucking clueless about it, caught up in his own lies? All Gavin had to do was offer up what scraps he had left and let Michael do the rest, so fucking simple.

Michael gives up then, puts his phone back in his pocket and freezes when his fingers brush up against paper.

Gavin’s letters, forgotten in the face of everything that happened. That odd reaction of his when Michael met up with him outside the storage company, like he’d known Michael would find it, but he’d never actually said anything, had he.

Michael feels strangely guilty, like a damn snoop going behind Gavin’s back as he takes the letters out of his pocket. Part of him so damn scared about what Gavin would have put in it after everything that had been in the letter he’d meant for Michael to have. 

Why he locked this one away like this, kept it somewhere only Waters should have had access to if something happened to him. Where it would have been his choice whether or not Michael ever saw it.

“You idiot,” he mutters, not sure who he’s talking to, and takes care not to tear the envelope or the letter itself as he opens it.

The letter spans several pages, folded and folded again, uneven creases that Gavin bothered to go back to fix, which is telling in itself.

It’s clear he struggled with this one, Michael able to see the starts and stops in the flow of words. Dark blots where the ink from the pen bled into the paper, realizes Gavin must have used that old fountain pen his father gave him to write it.

The ink’s a certain kind of blue Michael remembers seeing staining Gavin’s fingers in the past. His bright laughter as he threatened to smear blobs of it on Michael before they dried. Use it’s refill cartridges as weapons when Michael bitched about what a mess he was making, papers everywhere and _goddammit you asshole_.

Michael’s chest aches because the pen was lost in the fire, just one more thing among many but so important to Gavin even if he always tried to play it off like it wasn’t. (Another thing for Carmine to answer for.)

He stares at the letter in his hands, and starts reading.

========

Gavin comes back a few hours later, moves with a stealth and grace Michael’s never noticed before. Never bothered to look for, when Gavin’s always been his own best distraction, noise and flash and an uncanny ability to piss Michael off with a single word.

“Bloody hell,” Gavin says, when he turns around and finally notices he’s not alone in the living room.

Skirts around Michael warily after flipping the lights on, head cocked when Michael just watches him.

“Michael?”

Gavin seems...tired still. Slump to his shoulders like he’s carrying the weight of the world on them.

“I read your letter,” Michael says, glances at it sitting innocently in its envelope beside Gavin’s laptop. “The one you put into storage at that last place.”

Gavin sighs, moves to sit in one of the chairs across from the coffee table, picking the letter up as he does.

Michael watches him playing with a bent corner on the envelope like it’s something he’s done countless times before. Is the reason the damn thing’s bent to start with, and avoids meeting his eyes.

Has to be a goddamned pro at avoiding eye contact at this point, which is funny in all the ways it isn’t.

“We’re both idiots,” Michael says, another one of those simple little truths. 

A couple of idiots who’ve been too afraid of risking ruining one of the best things in their lives. Always though they’d have time to do it one day, and ran out of time when they weren’t looking.

Gavin tenses slightly before forcing himself to relax, make it look like he’s calm and relaxed. Absolutely nothing to worry about here, really.

Worries the corner of the envelope over and over, nervous energy and this deep-rooted fear.

Michael doesn’t ask why Gavin never told him how he felt in all the time they’ve known each other because it would be insulting to them both, not to mention hypocritical as fuck.

Gavin laughs, turning the envelope over in his hands, seems to find it so damn fascinating.

“Always had a problem with terrible timing too,” he murmurs, one part truth, one apart deflection. 

Michael smiles, stupid little thing. 

Thinks about Gavin’s letter, all the excuses and rationalizations he gave himself that he explains to Michael. Lays out so plainly in a way he’d never been able to say out loud. So much easier to spill everything into a letter, leave it behind for Michael to find one day and read the truth of them. Where Gavin wouldn’t have to sit there waiting for the rejection he was so sure he’d get if he told Michael how he felt.

All of it so close to everything Michael’s told himself that it would be funny if it didn’t mean so fucking much, and his heart hurts at the thought of all the time they’ve wasted.

“I love you,” he says, words he’s choked back so many times before coming so easily now. 

Gavin looks at him helplessly, so Michael pushes on.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” he says, holding Gavin's gaze because this is important, something he doesn’t want to fuck up. “I’m sorry I didn’t see what was going on until it was too late. I’m sorry you had to do that alone. I’m sorry - “

Gavin’s face twists, strangled noise caught in his throat as he pushes himself out of his chair, closing the distance between them until he’s looking down at Michael. 

“You stupid bastard,” Gavin says, nothing like anger to it this time as he searches Michael's face for something he must find because then he’s bending down to kiss him. 

Awkward angle and graceless as hell, simple stupid human want, need.

Something heartbreakingly desperate to it, hands shaking where they cradle Michael's face, and so fucking sweet because of it. Pulls back to rest his forehead against Michael's, breathes out a little sigh. 

“ _You stupid bastard_.”

Far from being a confession of undying love except for all the ways it is, and Michael refuses to let it slip through his fingers this time as he pulls Gavin down for another kiss.

========

Waking up in a strange place is never a great experience.

That initial moment of disorientation where you try to remember how you even got there, and why. 

If you should be worried, or just deeply disappointed. (In yourself, the universe at large, it all works out to be the same in the end.)

This time is no different as Michael closes his eyes. Hand coming up to massage his temples because of the steady, low-grade headache that’s taken up residency there.

Not enough sleep, or water. Too much stress, maybe all of the above, who fucking knows.

He bites back a groan when it spikes right behind his eyes, painful enough to make him grasp at any distraction at hand. His idiot brain deciding now would be a good time to retrace his steps to answer the questions of where the hell he is, and how the fuck he got here.

Flips back through flashes and glimpses of moments, remembers Gavin showing up at Jeremy’s apartment. The jumbled series of events that followed falling into some kind of order as his mind sorts itself out bit by agonizing bit.

Running all over the city to pick Gavin’s stashes clean, the drive back here. Gavin finally showing him why Carmine wanted him dead, what got him killed. The relentless soap opera level drama that followed, and -

“Oh, _fuck_.”

Jesus.

The two of them with their emotionally stunted confessions. The kisses that had lead to the bedroom because hell if they were both going to fit on that damned couch. Both of them too tired after the day they’d had to do much of anything pass trading kisses and giving voice to the things they couldn’t before. Things too fragile for the light of day, protected in the bubble around them under the overs with the lights out, whispered to one another in confidence.

Falling asleep, only for Michael to wake up alone and the other side of the bed long gone cold. (Waking up alone if never a great experience, but it’s so much worse after something like that.)

Michael looks toward the direction of the living room when he hears noises coming from there.

Footsteps and something heavy hitting the floor, the low murmur of someone’s voice pitched towards annoyance that follows not long after.

_Gavin._

Michael breathes out a sigh of relief that he hasn’t managed to spook him again. Chased him away again, but trepidation comes creeping in soon afterwards because he doesn’t know what to expect now.

He listens to Gavin moving around in the other room until the ridiculousness of the situation forces him into action. He’s still dressed, jacket dropped by the side of the bed and his shoes kicked off by the doorway. 

Michael feels more rested than he has in a long time even with that bitch of a headache, and remembers Gavin’s medical kits. Probably aspirin to be found in one of them he could take to get rid of it.

Nothing to be gained hiding in the bedroom anyway, so Michael shuffles out to the living room.

Gavin’s pacing restlessly in front of the wall he's turned into a murder board, arms crossed and a frown on his face.

He turns when Michael somehow manages to find the one goddamned squeaky board in the whole damned place. Just plants his fat fucking foot right in the middle of it to alert the goddamned world to his presence.

Michael almost misses the guilty look that flashes across Gavin’s face. Chases the frown away only to be replaced in turn by a small, hesitant smile.

“Good morning, Michael,” Gavin says, even though it has to be closing in on noon with the way sunlight is slanting through the spotty curtains on the windows.

Still, he Michael will give him an _A_ for effort and all that bullshit as his attempt at normalcy, strained as it is.

The laptop is humming away on the coffee table, files from the previous night pulled up. 

Gavin must have gone out, because there’s a new batch of empty energy drink cans that weren’t there the night before littered around the room, which might explain the pacing.

“Morning,” Michael greets cautiously. “What are you doing?”

Gavin tips his head as he considers Michael, and turns to look at the murder board like he’d forgotten it was there. Licks his lips nervously when he looks back at Michael. 

Comes to some sort of decision and holds his hand out to him in silent invitation.

Michael goes, easy as anything. Lets Gavin pull him in close, feels the vise around his chest loosen at the soft sigh from Gavin as he does, tension bleeding out of him.

Smiles at Gavin, small and shaky and closes his eyes when Gavin kisses him, slow and sweet.

Laughs a little when Gavin makes a noise in his throat, muttering about morning breath when they break away for air, cheeks tinged red as he feigns annoyance to avoid meeting Michael’s eyes.

“Gav?”

Gavin elbows him for the teasing note in his voice. Turns his focus back to the damn murder board and Michael does the same, his smile fading as he takes it in.

Gavin’s been busy, it seems.

There are more pins in it this morning, overwhelmingly red with a few other colors scattered across it. 

A healthy amount of black pins, along with a thin band of yellow and a broad swatch of green.

“I started this using locations of Carmine’s operations I knew about, remembered,” Gavin says, gesturing at the main map. “I needed the files on the drives and memory cards for the rest.”

Michael studies the map, eyes narrowing when he sees where they’ve been placed.

Matches it against the dodgy mental map he has of Los Santos and territories claimed by various crews and gangs. 

“The black pins are for places I’ve hit. Yellow ones are for Carmine’s allies, and the red ones mark the rest of Carmine’s operations,” Gavin says, and shrugs. “The ones I’m still sure about, anyway. He’s probably moved some of them by now, or will before too long.”

There’s still a hell of a lot of red up, outer edges starting to bleed into the green.

“What the hell is the green for?” Michael asks, even though he’s pretty goddamned sure he knows what Gavin’s answer is going to be.

There are only a handful of crews in Los Santos that would have that large of a presence, that kind of reach. Really only one that might pose any sort of threat to Carmine and what he’s attempting to do, even without outside backing. One with more than enough reason to want to push back with him encroaching on their territory.

Gavin hesitates, arm around Michael tightening briefly because he has to know this has a significant chance of backfiring on them if they’re wrong about this.

“People we might be able to go to for help,” he says, and gestures to the side of his damned murder board covered in photographs and stills he must have taken from security cameras and God only knows what else. “The Fake AH Crew.”


End file.
